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THE SENTIMENTAL SEX 


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THE SENTIMENTAL SEX 


BY 

GERTRUDE WARDEN 

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NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1896 





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Copyright, 1896, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



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CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — HIS WAY OF PUTTING IT ... I 

ii . — his story — continued .... 7 

in . — his story — continued . . . .15 

IV. — HER VERSION OF IT 2(5 

v . — her version — continued .... 42 

VI. — HIS WAY OF TELLING IT . . .58 

vii. — niel’s story — continued .... 67 
vm. — niel’s story — continued .... 87 

IX. — HER VERSION 102 

x . — her version — continued . . . .109 

XI. — MRS. VANSITTART’S VERSION . . • I 1 4 

XII. — MR. VANSITTART’S VERSION . . . . I 1 8 

XIII. — MRS. VANSITTART’S STORY . . . . 1 23 

XIV. — MR. VANSITTART’S VERSION . . . . 130 

XV. — MRS. VANSITTART’S VERSION . . . 134 

xvi. — mrs. vansittart’s story — continued . 147 

xvii. — mrs. vansittart’s version — continued . 1 54 

XVIII. — MR. VANSITTART’S VERSION . . . . 1 69 

xix. — mr. vansittart’s story — continued . 179 

xx. — mr. vansittart’s story — continued . 186 

XXI. — MR. VANSITTART’S LAST WORDS . . . 200 


v 


THE SENTIMENTAL SEX. 


CHAPTER I. 

HIS WAY OF PUTTING IT. 

“ With all my pulses throbbing at the memory alone 
Of your touch, 

’Til I seem to feel the burning of your lips upon my own, 
Kissed too much. 

“ In my heart a restless longing, in my head a weary pain, 
Torture give 

’Til the long retarded moment when I see you once again 
And shall live: 

“Then I’d give my soul in gladness for your whisper in mine ear, 
Oh, my Own! 

But, restless as my heart, the distant rushing of the weir, 
Sounds alone : 

“ Then the hardest life were restful were our lips not long apart, 
For love’s sake, 

And death the crown of longing could I sleep upon your heart, 
Not to wake ! ” 

From “ Rainbow Lights ” by <f Iris.” 

Published by Messrs Ruthven and Storr. 


My friend Jack Webster, who is a literary chap, 
tells me the lines are crude, that the use of the 


1 


2 


The Sentimental Sex. 


word “'til” is indefensible, and that the expres- 
sion “ Oh, my Own ! ” is only fit for a nigger banjo 
chorus. 

Personally, I don’t care. Literary merit is a 
thing I don’t profess to understand. I like those 
lines, and I have always liked them. The feeling 
in them — the genuine passion — that’s what at- 
tracts me. In verses I hate your cold polish. I 
don’t mind a rap if they scan, I want them to 
sound as if they were meant and felt. 

When that book of a woman’s verses, a neat 
little grey and silver volume, reached us out in 
Melbourne, and got rather badly mauled by the 
critics, I could have fought the jumped-up penny- 
a-liners who were so glib about its defects. The 
very title and author’s name ought to have made 
them a bit chivalrous. 

“Rainbow Lights” by “Iris.” 

Could you have a more modest and poetic 
title ? I read the book from cover to cover at a 
sitting, and got a lot of it by heart. I’d never 
liked any verses half so well, except Adam Lind- 
say Gordon’s. They were all about love, the one 
subject, to my mind, that sounds a lot better in 
rhyme. There’s so much a man feels that it would 


3 


His Way of Putting It. 

make him uncomfortable to say right out in prose 
— I’ve often wished I had a touch of the poetic 
faculty: I’m a bad hand at a love-letter, but one 
could say a lot more in a sonnet. 

“The nightingale’s complaint, 

It dies upon her heart, 

As 1 must on thine, 

Beloved as thou art ! ” 

Or: 

“ Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast : 

Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest ! ” 

Neither Shelley nor Shakespeare could have 
said that sort of thing in bald prose without upset- 
ting the sensibilities of the lady to whom the lines 
were addressed. At least, that’s my opinion. 
But then, Webster declares I respect women too 
much to understand them. Webster goes in for 
cheap cynicism at the expense of women, a thing 
I could never see any wit or humour in. 

I know that I idealise women, but then I had 
an ideal mother. She was an English country 
clergyman’s daughter, married to a young squire 
in a small way. It was a pure love match : she 
hadn’t a penny, and he first saw her among the 
school-children in church. The light on her pro- 
file made her look like a saint, and so he wanted 
to marry her. 


4 


The Sentimental Sex. 


At the time I, their first and only child was 
born, things were in a bad way with them finan- 
cially, so they left the old country for New South 
Wales, where a relative was doing well, sheep- 
farming. My father was killed by a fall from a 
horse he was breaking in when I was five. I 
shall never forget seeing the horse with his dead 
body lying across it brought home through a field 
in which I was playing, and my mother’s frantic 
grief, and the long drive in the waggon through 
parched fields under a hot sky to the grave- 
yard. 

My mother educated me, and I worshipped 
her. She was the most beautiful creature it is 
possible to imagine, very small and slight, as a 
woman ought to be, extraordinarily gentle and 
patient, and wonderfully clever in her way, which 
is the best woman’s way after all. I mean, she 
was clever at things. She couldn’t write, or 
speechify, or make repartees, or show a man he 
was in the wrong; but she was a beautiful needle- 
woman, and made first-class pastry. She could 
do almost anything in the house, and play and 
sing very prettily as well. Some of her framed 
flower-paintings we had about the place would, 
I daresay, be thought old-fashioned now; but 


His Way of Putting It. 5 

fashions change, and I like the art I am used to 
best. 

It was from her I got my taste for poetry. She 
could recite whole pages of Wordsworth and Mrs. 
Hemans, and pieces out of Thomson’s “Seasons,” 
and “The Deserted Village,” and I think she 
knew Dr. Watts by heart, as well as “Hymns 
Ancient and Modern,” for my mother was a most 
religious woman. My uncle gave in to her views 
at the farm, and we all tramped, or rode, or drove 
nine miles there and back to service on Sundays, 
and had Bible-classes in the big kitchen in the 
afternoons. The old God-fearing Puritan Sunday. 
Fashionable people in London, so I’m told, laugh 
at it, and speak as though it were a plague to be 
improved away off the face of the earth. For 
women to talk and think like that seems to me to 
be horrible. If women cease to believe and to 
obey, the world won’t hold together long. Gentle 
obedience and implicit belief are two of woman’s 
most beautiful qualities; and if she ceases to be- 
lieve and obey her God, how much longer do you 
think she will believe and obey her husband ? 

There’s an end at once of the beautiful old 
family life. A man goes out into the world, and 
has the edges of his religion a bit blunted by 


6 


The Sentimental Sex. 


knocking about ; but a woman should be kept 
warm and sheltered, to sweeten the home we all 
long to come back to. Then, if his business deal- 
ings with other men, or the mixed ways and 
morals of the crowd about him, tempt a man to 
disbelieve a bit in goodness, and trust, and purity, 
and true religion, the sight of his wife waiting for 
him by the fireside at home, puts him right again 
with his Maker. 


CHAPTER II. 

his story — continued. 

My mother died in a decline when I was four- 
teen, and I nearly died too. First I tried to hang 
myself, and then to starve myself to death on her 
grave. That awful business of death took all the 
pluck out of me for a long time. No one who 
hasn’t had a mother like mine can tell what her 
loss means. She is the one creature before whom 
neither man nor boy fears to make a fool of him- 
self, before whom he can be perfectly natural, just 
himself, and sure she will love him, console him, 
and forgive him, whatever he is, or whatever he 
has done. 

“My boy! My boy!” 

I can hear her voice now, every inflection of it, 
a soft, thin, rather tired sort of voice, but sweeter 
to me than any woman’s voice can ever be. And 
I can see her face as I saw it last whenever I shut 
my eyes: a delicate face, with a sweet gravity 

7 


8 


The Sentimental Sex. 


upon it, and a look of fatigue merged in rest that 
struck me almost as a reproach. Had I worried 
and wearied her so much with my noise and my 
boyish scrapes, and my demonstrative love, that 
she should look so tired and so glad to sleep ? 

She grew very thin before she died, and when 
her wedding-ring slipped off her finger she gave 
it to me. 

“That is for your wife when you grow up and 
171307,” whispered. “ Marry a good woman, 
Niel, for my sake.” 

I was six-and-twenty before I thought of mar- 
rying. Between whiles, I had been hard at work 
on the farm, which my uncle and I had developed 
into a big concern. Hard work it was, too, for 
we didn’t want to cut up the profits by employ- 
ing agents and overseers. For twelve years I was 
up at daybreak and in the saddle the best part of 
the day. Hard work in the open air, a big appe- 
tite for one’s meals, and a dog’s sleep at night — 
rather the life of a beast of burden, perhaps ; but 
a man can think and dream a lot riding many 
miles a day alone on the plains. 

Every now and then there would be a few 
days at Melbourne or Sydney, resulting in empty 
pockets and aching heads for a bit: not much 


9 


His Story. 

worse than high spirits and a liking for change 
and fun, and soon forgotten. 

It was after one of these holidays that I got a 
kind of low fever, very prevalent in the plains, but 
which I’d escaped until then. In fact, I’ve all my 
life been as strong as a cart-horse, and tough as 
leather, a big, lumbering, black-haired, brown- 
eyed man, such as the girls run after in the 
towns, because I suppose they think their size sets 
them off. 

A farmer’s daughter came over to help nurse 
me, would come and would stay, though I’d hard- 
ly done more than meet her once or twice at 
church or at dances got up in the winter. She 
was wonderfully good to me, saved my life, so 
they told me, sat up all night with me when I was 
very bad, and read to me all day when I was get- 
ting better. She was a tall, handsome, black- 
haired girl, with full red lips, and a trick of blush- 
ing whenever I looked at her. She had an odd 
broad accent I didn’t like in reading, and she 
wasn’t what you would call a lady. Still, remem- 
bering what she'd done for me, as I lay watching 
her when I was getting well, I made up my mind 
that I ought to marry her out of gratitude; for, 
mind, if I hadn’t had any vanity at all, I couldn’t 


10 


The Sentimental Sex. 


have failed to see that she was in love with me. 
Whenever she touched my hand I knew it, and as 
I was feeling tired and weak and wanted to be 
quiet, it vexed me to realise the presence of this 
red and white cheeked, healthful young woman, 
who was thrilling all over with love whenever she 
came near me, and ready to drop into my mouth 
like a ripe peach. 

She wasn’t in the least like my ideals, the 
women whose faces had floated before me in my 
long rides. They all belonged to the same type, 
pale and ethereal looking, with very fair, very soft 
hair, and deep, dreamy, blue or grey eyes. 

Still, Nannie Weston loved me, and I felt lonely 
at times and wanted love, and also I was grateful 
and couldn’t bear to hurt or disappoint a woman. 

So I asked her quietly to marry me, holding 
out my hand to her, open, to take hers. 

She gave a sort of gasp and grew quite white. 
Then she fell to shivering and crying horribly, 
tears that must have hurt her — I know they 
hurt me. 

“I am not good enough to be your wife!” 
she sobbed. 

I didn’t know what she meant at first. 

“ Why, you have been an angel to me,” I said. 


His Story. 1 1 

“I owe my life to you, so they tell me. But 
perhaps,” I added, though I own I did not speak 
seriously, “ perhaps you don’t care for me ?” 

“ Care for you,” she cried, and down on her 
knees by the bedside she went, and kissed my 
hands until her lips seemed to burn through my 
skin. “ I’d give my soul to be your wife, though 
I know you don’t love me, and only think you 
ought to be grateful. But I daren’t do it! You — 
you can’t have heard what they say about me.” 

I racked my brains to remember anything, and 
at last it came across me that I had pulled up 
Willie Ferguson pretty roughly, the year before, 
for his foul-mouthed tattle about Nannie Weston 
and another girl, too. 

“I don’t listen to cowardly lying about 
women,” I said. 

“ Then you have heard something ? ” 

“Nothing I listened to or believed.” 

“ God help me! It was true” 

Then she began sobbing again. I looked away 
from her out of the long open window to the 
verandah and the fields beyond. I suppose my 
head was weak after my illness, for I could 
hardly understand her even now. She had always 
seemed to me a good, hard-working, modest girl 


► 


12 


The Sentimental Sex. 


— I never knew such a hand at blushing! And 
she saved her old grandmother no end of money 
by her cleverness and industry about the farm. 
Before I could well collect my thoughts so as to 
consider her in this new light, she was in the 
middle of her own history, speaking very fast and 
very low, lest our old servant, who was pottering 
about in the passage and in and out of the room, 
should hear her. 

Her head was bent, and mine was turned 
away, so that I could hardly hear her words, but 
I caught their purport through scattered fragments 
which reached my ears. 

“I was seventeen — so handsome, and I loved 
him — didn’t know he was married. After a dance 
he asked me to run away with him — threatened 
to kill himself if I refused. No, no! he wasn’t a 
villain ; I loved him ! He would have got a divorce 
and married me, but he died of typhoid fever five 
years ago. In Melbourne, and starving — what 
was I to do ? My people wouldn’t take me back. 
I had disgraced them, they said. A friend of his 
lent me money, and was very kind to me: but he 
wanted a return. Four years ago, my mother and 
my sister died. They had no one to do the house- 
work at the farm. I wrote and prayed to be taken 


13 


His Story. 

back, to drudge, to slave, only be taken home. 

I knew I was living in sin because I didn’t really 
love the man. I never thought the other was sin. 
They wanted to save a servant’s wages at home, 
so they took me. They'd kept it quiet as to 
what had become of me, but by the way some of 
the girls looked at me, and the free way some of 
the men spoke, I could see they guessed. You 
were always so different, treating me as if I was a 
queen, though I was dressed as a servant and 
doing rough work. More than two years ago I 
began to love you and think about you, but I 
never hoped to be your wife. I thought you 
knew. Now that you do know, will you despise 
me so very much? It was all so long ago; it 
began seven years ago, and I’m only twenty-four 
now. For four years I’ve been trying so hard to 
live things down. Can’t you — can’t you just think 
of me only as a widow who has been married 
twice before she was twenty ? No man has so 
much as kissed my cheek since, except he’s 
snatched it at Christmas time. And I’d love you, 
I’d worship you as no cold and proud and virtuous 
lady could , I’ve suffered so much and been so 
miserable, and tried so hard to get God to forgive 
me. And yet I haven’t been half so wicked as 


M 


The Sentimental Sex. 


most men have been by the time they are my age 
— and girls marry them all the same. But you’re 
not like that. Oh, Mr. Vansittart, I’d give my 
life for you! Don’t be too hard on me.” 

I seem to hear her voice now, and that heart- 
breaking quiver in it. My heart bled for her, and 
my eyes swam with tears. It was one of the 
most painful moments of my life, but it never 
once came into my mind to marry her after what 
she had told me. Yet I could not say the words. 
She was kneeling by my side and eagerly watch- 
ing me. I could feel that, though I was looking 
away. If my life had depended upon it, I could 
not say the words which would wound and 
humiliate her. So, still without looking at her, 
I gently lifted her hand which lay upon the cover- 
let, and reverently kissed her fingers. 

She got up from her knees, and stood quite 
still and silent for a moment. 

Then, “I understand!” she said with a little 
sob, and walked straight out of the room. 

I haven’t seen Nanny Weston from that day 
to this. I’ve often thought of her, and I’ve been 
very, very sorry for her. But I couldn’t have 
acted otherwise. I couldn’t put my dead mother’s 
ring on the finger of any but a good woman. 


CHAPTER III. 
his story — continued. 

T hree years after that scene with poor Nanny 
Weston, I fell in love with a woman’s picture. 

Meantime, by nothing but luck, backed up by 
hard work, I had become a rich man. 

It was a great time for speculation just then. 
My uncle and I had saved some money. We 
speculated at the right time, and in the right way. 
We bought a lot of land, and we knew how to 
manage it when we’d got it. We doubled and 
trebled our sheep-farming business, and we saw 
terraces and hotels springing up in waste places 
we had bought for a song. 

Growing rich didn’t alter my uncle’s way of 
living a jot, and it didn’t alter mine much on the 
surface. But, in my secret heart, I always wanted 
to get to the “Old Country” my mother had so 
often talked to me about, my own country and 
that of my fathers, but which I had never seen. 

15 


1 6 


The Sentimental Sex. 


'‘Save up money enough to retire, and then 
go and cut a dash in London, that’s your notion,” 
my uncle would say. “You'd best do it before 
you grow stiff in the joints; for when the smart 
folk in London have fleeced you, you may be glad 
enough to creep back to Australia to make a 
living.” 

It was true 1 wanted to come to England, and 
true, too, that I wanted an English wife. 

Nannie’s story had somehow set me against 
the girls out there. Even if I’d wanted to marry 
any of them — and frankly I didn’t — I couldn’t hurt 
that poor girl’s feelings by taking any one of them 
home as my wife, with Nannie living not twenty 
miles off, loving me still, as I knew she did. So 
towards England as my home, and England as the 
place where I was to meet my wife, my thoughts 
went out. 

Just about then I fell in with Jack Webster, a 
literary man. I have a great respect for people 
who can write, though it’s a pity that they’re 
generally so short of money. Webster did a little 
book-reviewing for the papers. He was fresh 
from London, and could tell me about the life and 
people there. When “Rainbow Lights” by 
“Iris” came out, he pooh-poohed my liking for 


>7 


His Story. 

it, and called it “musical jingle.” He took the 
trouble to write to London to find out all about 
the author for me though, and he met me one day 
in the town, flourishing a letter, and quite ex- 
cited. 

“I’ve had a long screed about * Iris,’ ” he said. 
“It’ll make capital copy on the top of the slatings 
her book got in the press here. The man who 
writes to me used to know her well some years 
ago, but has lost sight of her recently. He tells 
me she is quite young — not more than six or 
seven and twenty — and one of the most beautiful 
girls in London, very slight, very fair, with mar- 
vellous blue eyes, a transparent skin, and all the 
requisite ideal attributes for a poetess. Also, she 
is highly accomplished, plays, sings, paints, talks 
half-a-dozen languages, and is altogether a rara 
avis, a marvel of virtue, beauty, and genius. My 
friend also says She has seen, in his own phrase- 
ology, 4 many strange vicissitudes of fortune, and 
has mixed with the highest and lowest in point of 
intellectual culture and refinement.’ But here’s 
his letter. He’s rather an old proser; read it for 
yourself.” 

No story — not even poor Nannie Weston’s — 
ever moved me so much as this kindly, discur- 


1 8 The Sentimental Sex. 

sive old gentleman’s description of “ Iris's ” girl- 
hood. 

“I remember her, an imaginative, excitable 
child,” he wrote, ‘‘strangely beautiful and fairy*, 
like in appearance, and full of whims and fancies, 
as are so many children of genius. Her elder 
brother, brilliantly clever, but harder and colder in 
disposition, went blind as the result of a fever at 
the age of sixteen. ‘ Iris’s ’ devotion (I speak of 
her as ‘ Iris,’ as I do not feel at liberty to disclose 
her real name) was marvellous. For years she 
waited on him hand and foot, straining every 
nerve to keep him in comfort, after their mother’s 
elopement and their father’s suicide had robbed 
them at once of parents and a home.” 

I could scarcely bear to read more. 

This, then, was the true story of the beautiful 
and gifted creature whose work a miserable little 
quill-driving clique here in Melbourne had com- 
bined to insult, because they had neither hearts 
nor brains to understand it! 

My thoughts went back to the delicious word 
pictures she had drawn, and I imagined her — 
this slender fairy-like, yellow-haired, and blue- 
eyed creature in each situation she had de- 
scribed. 


His Story. 19 

“ There’s a cairn that crowns the hill-side where the sloping 
shadows lie, 

And I pause while beside it, ’neath a grey and troubled 
sky: 

But my heart is beating elsewhere than my weary feet have 
fled, 

With the passion of the living by the shelter of the dead.” 

The whole scene came before me just as 
though I had been a witness of it — the bare, lofty 
hill, topped by the rough pile of stones, the in- 
tense gloom and solitariness of the place, and that 
lovely, fragile girl, sighing her heart out amid such 
unresponsive surroundings. 

‘‘Poor ‘Iris’s’ life has been a very hard one,” 
the letter continued, “and I have reason to be- 
lieve that an unhappy love affair helped to make 
it harder still. I am told that this gifted young 
creature bestowed her heart upon a totally worth- 
less object, but I am not quite sure of the facts. 
I earnestly hope that the success of her charm- 
ing little volume of poems may be the begin- 
ning of those better and brighter days to which 
her genius, her merit, and her misfortunes en- 
title her.” 

“‘Rainbow Lights’ is being extensively 
‘boomed’ in London,” Jack Webster said to me 
when I met him by accident a few weeks later. 


20 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“The publishers have already issued a new edi- 
tion, with a portrait. She really is confoundedly 
pretty.” 

Within an hour, that new edition with the 
portrait was mine, and it marked an epoch in 
my life. 

The frontispiece was the reproduction of a 
photograph, and anything more lovely it is im- 
possible to imagine. Passion and purity in one, 
that’s what the face showed me, and an appealing 
pathos which brought a lump in my throat when- 
ever I looked at it. A sort of power about it, too, 
if one can use such a word in connection with 
anything so ethereal and so intensely feminine. A 
look, anyhow, as of tremendous capacity to en- 
dure for the sake of a person or a cause be- 
loved. 

Masses of fluffy light hair were tossed in a 
cloudy sort of way all about her face, and a lovely 
throat rose out of some loosely-arranged muslin 
stuff, vignetted off to nothing. The features were 
small and extremely delicate, the expression in the 
large eyes, framed in long, curled lashes, was one 
of rapt ecstasy. That such a woman should have 
to battle with the world, a woman who could 
look like that and write like that, and that there 


21 


His Story. 

could be men found so despicable as to be capable 
of giving her pain, appeared to me nothing less 
than an outrage. 

I bought up all the copies of “ Rainbow Lights ” 
which contained the portrait. I didn’t want other 
men to be looking at her, and then giving utter- 
ance in my hearing to such sacrilegious sort of re- 
marks as that she was “confoundedly pretty.” I 
had the picture copied on ivory by a miniature 
painter and placed in a locket which I wore on 
my watch-chain. 

But I did more than that. I wrote over to her 
publishers, asking for some copies of the original 
photograph from which the engraving in the book 
was taken. I gave them full particulars about 
myself, and told them I had bought up all the 
volumes containing the portrait which I could 
find in Melbourne, and I told them also my opin- 
ion of the verses. 

After some delay my reward came. The pub- 
lishers had much pleasure in forwarding me a 
large copy of “ Iris’s ” photograph, with the poet- 
ess’s signature beneath, which she had been gra- 
ciously pleased to send to an “Australian admirer 
of her work.” 

That portrait, which was six times larger, and 


22 


The Sentimental Sex. 


a thousand times more beautiful, than the engrav- 
ing, settled it. 

I wrote to “Iris,” care of her publishers, told 
her my age, position, family, height, general ap- 
pearance, and a very great deal about the state of 
my feelings towards her, and the absolute wor- 
ship with which the study of her face and her 
writings inspired me, and finally I humbly begged 
to know whether it was any use for me to start at 
once for England and ask her in person to marry 
me. 

I thought I should never get through the pe- 
riod of waiting until the answer came. At last 
two letters arrived with the London postmark : 
one, as I could see, was stamped with the name 
of “Iris’s” publishing firm; the other — I should 
have known it even if I hadn’t seen her signature 
— was from “Iris” herself ! / 

She wrote on grey paper, stamped with a fly- 
ing swallow in the corner of the envelope. Her 
handwriting was large and very clear. My heart 
has always been sound as a bell from a medical 
standpoint, but I really thought it would burst my 
ribs as I broke the violet seal (stamped with a 
rainbow arch and the name “Iris”) on the back 
of the letter. 


23 


His Story. 

At the first words my heart went down to my 
boots. Yet it was the kindest letter in the world. 

“Dear Friend over the Sea,” “Iris” began, 
“I have received your beautiful letter, and I am 
so sorry! My publishers’ letter will explain. 
Forgive me the pain I never meant to cause you, 
and think of me kindly, for I too have suffered. 

“ ‘ Iris.’ ” 

The publishers’ letter was as follows : — 

“Dear Sir, — We believe that our client, ‘Iris,’ 
is writing you by this post. We may mention 
that yours is the thirty-fourth offer of marriage 
which has been forwarded to her under cover to 
us during the past few weeks, since the issue of 
“Rainbow Lights” with the author’s portrait. 
We have our client's authority for informing you 
of her marriage, which took place exactly a year 
ago, to Mr. Walter Lambert of the London Stock 
Exchange. Faithfully yours, 

“ Ruthven & Storr.” 

It was two years later before “ Iris ” came into 
my life again. She had published another little 
book of poems before then ; and among the verses 


24 The Sentimental Sex. 

were a few dedicated to “My Friend over the 
Sea.” 

The last three taught me that she was not 
happy in her married life. 

“ So near, yet we, not of our will, 

Drift apart ; 

Seeking an echo still to the voice 
Of the heart. 


u Lonely, the soul turns on its way, 
Seeking love, 

From the cold world’s eyes to the grey 
Skies above: 


“ ‘ Lost ’ as we wander all our life through, 

Comes the cry, 

‘ Is our soul’s peacegiver still ? ’ Was it you ? 

Was it I ? ” 

Thinking about her had grown to be a sort of 
monomania with me ; and at last, after my un- 
cle’s death, finding myself at thirty-one years of 
age a rich man with no ties, I resolved to set sail 
for the old country. At any rate I might get to 
know “Iris,” and perhaps become her friend, if 
she wanted one. 

Jack Webster I never took into my confidence, 
and he knew nothing of that correspondence 
through the publishers two years before. He 


His Story. 25 

came to see me off, and almost at parting said he 
had “ a bit of news for me.” 

“ You remember those poems by ‘ Iris’ I used 
to chaff you about ?” he said. “ At that time the 
pretty poetess was married to a Mr. Lambert. But 
I’ve just heard that she’s been a widow for over a 
year, and that she goes a good deal into smart lit- 
erary society. Perhaps you may meet her in Lon- 
don.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


HER VERSION OF IT. 

I shall always particularly remember this 
evening, because I had on a white evening gown 
for the first time since Mr. Lambert’s death. 

Of course I had never worn those monstrosities 
called “ weeds.” I cannot see a particle of sense 
in a woman making a fright of herself simply be- 
cause her husband is dead. Surely that is the 
very time when she should set forth to advantage 
such charms as are left to her, if not to attract 
other men, at least to justify her late husband’s taste. 

Anyhow, I don’t look well in black, and I hate 
wearing it. I am naturally too pale, and black 
gives me the miserables and makes me look paler 
still. It’s such a silly business, this conventional 
mourning. “So many months’ crape for a fa- 
ther,” “ white crape cuffs for a husband,” etc. ; as 
though one’s milliner regulated the extent of one’s 
sorrow ! 


Her Version of It. 


27 


I’ve had to tell people that I “never mourn 
outwardly ” to account for my avoidance of 
“ weeping” veils and bonnet-strings. It is all so 
absolutely funny to me — the idea that I should 
make a guy of myself, and shun all society and 
amusements, because, more than a year ago, a 
gentleman who happened to be my husband fell 
off his chair at the dinner-table in an apoplectic 
fit, and was expensively doctored and nursed, and 
finally fussily committed to earth in a series of 
elaborate boxes, heaped high with sickly-smelling 
flowers which in life he particularly disliked. 

Convention dogs one’s heels everywhere. But 
it does not do to fly too much in the face of it. 
“ The masses ” are all in favour of convention, and 
the masses can make life very uncomfortable for 
the units. 

I don’t think I am really hard-hearted. In fact 
I’m sure I can’t be, for I always feel glad to re- 
member that I laughed as usual that night when 
Mr. Lambert told his Scotch bill-discounting story. 

One of the most difficult lessons to learn in life 
is to laugh and to cry when it is expected of you. 

A colony of female Lamberts descended upon 
me at the funeral. Tears came readily enough 
to them , which was the more remarkable as some 
3 


28 


The Sentimental Sex. 


of them had not seen Mr. Lambert for years, and 
three of them had recently been engaged in a law- 
suit with him. I rubbed my eyelids with a rough 
towel when I saw them from my bedroom win- 
dow coming slowly up to the house, but I had to 
swallow down a little scream of laughter, for the 
sight of them brought to my mind so clearly that 
line of Lewis Carroll’s: 

“ Some of us are out of breath, and all of us are fat.” 

Life seems to me like a comedy in which one 
has constantly to play parts for which one is to- 
tally unsuited because the big world-public says : 

“This is the character you must assume now. 
Otherwise we will hoot and pelt you.” 

I was a widow. Consequently, I had to be 
heartbroken. 

I shut up my house (a gloomy, stuccoed, Bays- 
water caravanserai), dismissed the servants, and 
slipped off to a little primitive village by the sea. 
As Mr. Lambert had to die, I was glad he died in 
the first days of September. A fine English Sep- 
tember is a glorious month. The “trippers” 
have spent all their money on tinned meats, nig- 
gers, and beer, and have gone back to their slums, 
and the middle-class mammas (is there anything 


Her Version of It. 


29 


more terrible than an English middle-class mam- 
ma, stout, suspicious, stolid, and supercilious ? ) 
have dragged their cockney-tongued brood home; 
prices drop, tradespeople grow civil, and the sea 
is no longer fringed with shivering, red-nosed 
females, taking a “dip” because they understand 
that it is “good for them,” in baggy, ill-cut bath- 
ing gowns. 

In the middle of September I had sea and shore 
nearly to myself, and I shall not easily forget the 
joy of my first long swim out to sea. 

I actually turned a somersault in the waves as 
I told myself I was a widow! 

Mr. Lambert had been a very nice man in 
many ways, but oh! I was so glad to be my little 
self again. 

Had he left me any money 1 might have felt in 
some sense tied. But I knew already that when 
1 had honestly paid all his debts, as I meant to do, 
I should be in almost exactly the same position 
out of which I had married him. His relations 
had cooled off wonderfully since they too had 
discovered this. We had lived in an extravagant 
manner, but I believe that had Mr. Lambert lived 
he would have made a very large fortune. 

As it was, I should be just myself, without 


3 » 


The Sentimental Sex. 


anybody’s money or anybody’s will to bind me, 
and I opened my arms to the sea in my delight 
at the thought, and splashed and kicked to free 
myself from all remembrance of those two dull, 
pompous, ponderously-respectable Bayswater 
years, with my mincing lady’s-maid and my pur- 
ple-nosed butler, and the rest of the household 
appendages, and the eternal dinners, and the 
family pew on Sundays, and the slow carriage 
horses pounding round the park, and the plump 
matrons who rustled into my vast drawing-room. 

Hurrah! ! 

I should never, never see any of them any 
more! 

Oh, it had had its advantages, of course, chief 
among them was the cessation from soulless, hard 
work, work that brought in no kudos and very 
little money. I have earned my living in many 
different ways, all dreary and all undistinguished, 
since my mother eloped with my father’s head 
clerk, and on my fifteenth birthday I pushed open 
the study door to find my father on the floor 
behind it with his throat cut. 

It was horrible — I have never yet conquered 
the sick terror which even now creeps over me 
when I find the least difficulty in opening a door, 


Her Version of It. 


3i 


the morbid fear lest I should find something like 
that behind it! But hideous as the shock was, it 
was not the worst thing in store for me. 

I was ultra-sensitive, emotional, and fanciful 
in those days; impressionable too to the least 
degree, and I have always been, unfortunately for 
me, exceedingly pretty. I say advisedly “unfor- 
tunately,” for I don’t believe beauty ever helped 
a penniless girl in life unless she was thoroughly 
unprincipled. It’s like a lump of gold in a man’s 
pocket that he won’t sell. If it is not a market- 
able commodity, it won’t prevent him from starv- 
ing, and its possession will only make him envied 
and detested, and inclined to over-rate his own 
value. 

My beauty not being of the saleable order, 
only attracted to me any amount of undesirable 
attention. I was credulous and enthusiastic, and 
easily fell in love, and I was actually silly enough, 
on more than one occasion between the ages of 
fifteen and eight and twenty, to suppose that a 
girl of such parentage as mine, with no better 
protector than a blind invalid brother, and no 
money but what she earned herself, could expect 
honourable love from men in the rank of life in 
which she had been born ! 


32 


The Sentimental Sex. 


It was a laughable mistake on my part, of 
course, a girl living in cheap London lodgings, 
rising at daybreak to copy MSS. or to tint photo- 
graphs, hurrying out in all weathers, ill-shod and 
insufficiently clad, to give music-lessons, snatch- 
ing meals in pastry-cooks’ shops or restaurants, 
rushing back home to work at translations from 
French and German books, and letting herself out 
again with her latch-key in evenings to sing in 
the chorus of a theatre, or to play dance-music or 
accompaniments until her fingers were sore, at 
small dances and “at homes” — for such a girl, 
leading such a vagrant, unsheltered, unwomanly 
existence, to hope for the honourable love of a 
well-off young gentleman was indeed absurd. 

I had infinite capacity for enjoyment in those 
days, and an unreasonable youthful notion that a 
little happiness was my right. I never realised 
that poor girls who are pretty should belong to 
one of two classes: they should have either no 
morals or no feelings. 

The former class, if they don’t drink too much, 
usually succeed well in life, and almost invariably 
enjoy themselves. Sealskin jackets, champagne 
suppers, and diamond rings, are among the tangi- 
ble prizes for which they strive, and which they 


Her Version of It. 


33 


frequently obtain, to say nothing of the glorious 
possibility of a countess’s coronet, hampered solely 
by a half-drunken, half-witted, wholly-unimpor- 
tant husband. 

Then there are the very good girls, who like 
each others’ society, enjoy teaching, relish a “life 
of independence,” cherish a distant, sentimental 
affection for an actor or a clergyman, take their 
love at second hand in serial fiction, and live in 
flats with a lot of other good, busy, contented 
little women, like a warren of feminine rabbits. 

Even if I had not had poor Euan with me, I 
couldn’t have lived like that. Collectively, I ad- 
mire and respect women, and certainly pity them 
from the bottom of my heart. But individually I 
don’t like them, and I never shall. 

I don’t like their humbug, their shiftiness their 
small-mindedness; I don’t like their coarseness 
when they know the world, and their inanity 
when they don’t; I don’t like their conceit, their 
“cocksureness,” and their intense egotism, their 
narrow views and tedious conventionality. I hate 
them when they are emancipated, and ugly, and 
noisily assertive; and I distrust them when they 
are pretty, and sympathetic, and painted. 

From the beginning, we women are so detest- 


34 


The Sentimental Sex. 


ably self-conscious, so absorbed in and weighted 
down by our sex (if I must bring in a word which 
has been vulgarised until it is detestable). As 
little baby-girls we are wriggling about and show- 
ing off our airs and graces to attract praises and 
kisses. In our short frocks we are trying to gain 
notice of little boys who scorn us. Mark how a 
girls’ school will simper and giggle and strain to 
catch the eyes of wholesome-minded, greedy little 
boys, thinking of naught but their dinner, or their 
“tuck,” or their football and cricket. We have 
our revenge later on, of course, when the creature 
we have so long been vainly trying to charm de- 
velops certain ugly qualities we do not under- 
stand, and chases and terrifies us, and breaks our 
hearts sometimes. But the man, whatever he be, 
is usually capable of being taken out of himself by 
his feelings. Whether love of a woman, or love 
of an art as a cause, possesses him, and whether 
the passion be noble or wholly base, at least it is 
a passion for the time. But show me the love 
which will make an ordinary woman forget for 
one whole hour her personal appearance. When 
the last trump sounds it will set man thinking of 
his Maker and woman curling her front hair. 

All this tirade about my sex is just to explain 


Her Version of It. 


35 


that I didn’t like them, that I couldn’t live in flats 
with them, or pretend to find pleasure in their 
society, and that instead, I chose to waste my 
heart in most prodigal fashion upon (I hope) un- 
usually unworthy specimens of the other sex. 

Those years are all over. I daresay, that had I 
belonged to the first class of pretty and penniless 
girls and eloped with my first sweetheart (who 
was a married man, although I never learned it 
until his wife called upon me as I was trying on 
my wedding-dress) I should have speedily got 
over my passion for him, and seeing him daily en 
robe de chambre , without the glamour of love to 
blind me, should have been glad enough to return 
him after a few “mad months” (I believe that is 
the correct term) to his liege lady, with profound 
apologies, and should have retired with the ample 
competency he was kind enough to offer to settle 
on me, heartily glad to be so well rid of him. 

Instead, having loved him crazily for four years, 
I cried myself very ill and nearly blind, wore my- 
self out by passionate scenes of resistance and re- 
proach, and finally, to protect myself, became 
engaged to a man I had known all my life, to 
whom before long I became sincerely attached. 

Needless to say, he turned out badly. I have 


The Sentimental Sex. 


36 

reason to believe his character was quite unusually 
depraved, even for the semi-theatrical, semi- ra- 
cing set among whom he passed his time. I was 
one of the very few people in London who did 
not know of his liaison with a well-known per- 
son in the half-world, nor had I the least suspi- 
cion that he fostered everywhere the belief that I 
stood to him in the same relation. 

A stupid, stale story it is now. But it was 
difficult to live through. And home life was 
more than difficult : it was terrible. 

I can hardly talk of Euan even now. That is 
the rawest, sorest spot in my memory. To pos- 
sess absolute genius for painting and to be hope- 
lessly blind; to be eaten up with ambition and 
get to realise that all one’s faculties are wasting 
daily in a slow disease. I have watched Euan, 
and listened to him, and nursed him, until my 
heart seemed to ache with physical pain, and 
tears to burn as they rolled down my cheeks with 
pity and with impotent rebellion against the fate 
that could so afflict him. 

When he was twenty-seven, and I twenty- 
four, he died. I am sure that he loved me, al- 
though his bitterness of spirit (which was but 
natural) and his intense nervousness, jealousy, 


Her Version of It. 


37 


and irritability, made me very wretched every 
day of my life for nine years. But the death of 
an exacting companion who depends upon one 
wholly and solely, leaves one’s life very blank 
indeed. 

Four years more of struggle, of disappoint- 
ment and disallusion, of strong feelings forced 
back on themselves, of toil and heartache and 
health breaking down under the strain : two 
years of bourgeois ease and comfort at Bays- 
water, and I found myself at thirty kicking up 
my heels in the sea at the thought that I was free 
again ! 

Free — with no ties, no regrets, no illusions, 
and above all, no further capability for feeling 
blase , if you like ; anyhow, I couldn’t be hurt any 
more. And, for just a few short moments, I felt 
young , in spite of everything, and ready for what 
the future might bring. 

That was a year ago. To-night, after return- 
ing from a ‘ ‘ literary and artistic at home,” I am 
sitting before the long glass in the bedroom of my 
tiny flat in Westminster, and asking myself if this 
life is really worth living. 

There I am in my white satin, which it cost 
me three weeks of hard work to earn, delicate 


The Sentimental Sex. 


38 

lace about the neck and sleeves, and one or two 
tiny diamond brooches (relics of the Bayswater 
greatness) pinned here and there upon it. I am 
very, very pretty; it is quite wonderful how I 
wear, considering these thirteen years of strain, 
and the last year, which has been pretty hard, too 
— but there isn’t a trace of youth, or of happiness 
either, about my face, to my mind. It is the face 
of a pretty ghost, for all the life and enjoyment 
there is about it. And yet I am not very tired — 
not more tired than usual — and I got flattered to- 
night, as I always do, both by men and women. 
Women always pet me; is it because they can 
see, as men can’t, the claws behind my nice 
soft fur ? 

I am sick to death of it all! I want to feel 
young again just for half-an-hour. I look years 
younger than I am — but that isn’t the same thing. 
I look a fragile girl of six and twenty, and I feel a 
worn-out woman of six and forty. I never had 
a chance of being young while I was young. It 
was all work, work, work! Bitter sadness and 
reproaches in the dull and dirty lodgings I called 
home; outside, artistic toil, Sisyphus-like, for ever 
striving, for ever being disappointed; and in- 
side my own heart a fight for ever going on with 


Her Version of It. 


39 

my own natural passions, which, because I was a 
woman, were wicked. 

Oh, I won in the end, for I had brains and will 
and the deadening common-sense which is born 
of starving necessity. By the time I married an 
excellent city man, nearly old enough to be my 
father, I had so fought down my feelings that I 
had absolutely none left to fight with. So I 
was a model middle-class wife for two years. 
Just two years; I couldn’t have stood it much 
longer. 

That marriage was the finishing touch in my 
prematurely ageing education. If I hadn’t been 
married, I might have gone on clinging to the 
faith inculcated by popular English novelists that 
marriage is the panacea for all ills, the be-all and 
end-all of a woman’s existence. 

Having tried marriage for two years, I am 
qualified to speak of it as an episode which I have 
already nearly forgotten. 

It is an accident, purely an accident, when 
and whom we marry. Young women would be 
much happier and more settled in mind if they 
were not led to place such an absurdly high im- 
portance on that one particular incident in their 
lives. Enfin , it is a great pity that every healthy 


40 


The Sentimental Sex. 


young Englishwoman, with a tendency to fall in 
love, cannot be compulsorily married for one 
whole year at the age of twenty, with the option 
of continuing the arrangement or not at the end of 
that time, as it pleases her. 

I believe by such an arrangement there would 
be less vice, and I think there would be fewer 
large families, and I am sure there would be less 
restlessness and anaemic discontent among girls, 
and absolutely no hysterical feminine poetry and 
romance writing. 

Talking of hysterical poetry brings me back to 
to-night. 

There was the usual mob — how tired I am of 
all their faces ! and a few stranger^ Among them 
a gigantic young man in badly-cut evening dress, 
with enormous feet and hands, and that very 
black, crisply-curling hair, which denotes exuber- 
ant vitality and brute force. 

I admire brute force, but I detest black hair. 
The young man had a fresh, red complexion, 
large, cow-like, brown eyes, full lips, under a 
black moustache, a massive neck, very red at the 
back, and a voice like a mellow fog-horn. 

Mrs. Cholmondeley-Vereker brought him up, 
and his size and redness actually made me blink. 


Her Version of It. 


4 ' 


She speaks so indistinctly that I couldn’t catch his 
name; but she lisped something about his being 
“an immense admirer of my lovely poetry” and 
“ dying ” to know me. 

Then, as she moved away, she whispered in 
my ear — 

“Isn’t he splendidly handsome?” 


CHAPTER V. 
her version — continued. 

I didn’t think him “splendidly handsome” 
at all. 

He was altogether too big, quite unmanage- 
ably so in a drawing-room. I was afraid every 
moment lest he should tread upon people, or 
sweep them away with one of those giant paws. I 
like a moderately tall man to set off my own 
smallness and slenderness, but this one made me 
look like a fly. 

He stared down upon me in a wide-eyed way, 
as though I were a doll in a shop-window, and 
tried to speak low when he addressed me, pre- 
sumably suiting his voice to my size. 

“This is a very interesting assemblage, is it 
not ?” he said. 

I hardly knew what to reply. It had not struck 
me in that light. Anything staler or less inter- 
esting I could hardly imagine than this coterie of 

42 


Her Version. 


43 


ill-dressed semi-celebrities, priding themselves 
upon their artistic tastes and their irreproachable 
morals, arriving early with goloshes in a parcel 
and flowers in a paper bag, and hurrying off at 
eleven to catch the last omnibus to Peckham or 
Camberwell. 

“ Haven’t you been here before ?” I asked. 

“Never. I’ve barely been in London a week. 
I’m a regular backwoods savage, you know.” 

Of course that accounted for the cut of his 
clothes, which seemed to flap about him. 

“ It was a man I met in the smoking-room of 
my hotel- who brought me to-night. In the 
course of a chat I told him how much I wanted to 
meet some distinguished literary people, so he 
very kindly offered to bring me along. I sup- 
pose,” he added, with a shyness which was odd 
in one so big, “that you’re all very well known, 
aren’t you ? ” 

“Not very,” I answered, trying hard not to 
smile. “ It is difficult to be very well known in 
London long. We do the best we can by send- 
ing paragraphs about ourselves to the halfpenny 
evening papers and the * society ’ weeklies. But 
the public always prefers to read about the 
Queen’s cook or the Princess of Wales’s cats.” 


44 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“Is it possible?” he said in genuine surprise. 
Clearly the backwoodsman had no sense of 
humour. 

“I suppose you don’t do anything?” he sug- 
gested, timidly. 

“Why should you suppose that?” I asked. 

It was so curious and so new to realise that he 
was certain to answer truthfully that I waited 
with some interest to hear what he would say. 

“Well,” he returned, very gently, “you look 
so fragile and so beautiful — and so rich” 

“lam not really fragile,” I said, “but rather 
tough. And I am most certainly not rich.” 

“ And do you write or do anything ? ” 

“lama journalist.” 

“A lady journalist! Is it possible? I’ve never 
met one before. But I’ve heard about them, and 
— surely they don’t all look lik zyou ? ” 

His admiration was so absurdly frank that I 
could hardly keep from laughing. 

“I will point out some other lady journalists 
to you, and then you can judge for yourself,” I 
said. “There is Mrs. Fulton Soanes, an editress 
of long standing; and Mrs. Moreton Wainwright, 
who earns her living by describing other women’s 
clothes and describing them invariably wrong; 


Her Version. 


45 


and Miss Hambleton, an American journalist, who 
disguises herself sometimes as a lady, but more 
successfully as a hop-picker, in order to write 
sensational articles. And over there by the re- 
freshment-table is old Mrs. Barrymore Grant, who 
interviews stage celebrities, and goes into columns 
of astonishment and gush over their domestic vir- 
tues; next to her is Miss Weatherly, who writes 
about the Higher Education of Women, and once 
sent me a postcard containing ten faults in spell- 
ing. That plump little lady in the very decollete 
gown is ” 

“ Don’t tell me any more,” he said. “Iam 
very glad indeed to meet so many celebrated peo- 
ple; and I consider this one of the most interest- 
ing evenings of my life. But the other ladies are 
all either too thin or too fat. Not one is in the 
least lik zyou. I want you to tell me the sort of 
thin gyou write. Shall you go home and describe 
to-night’s entertainment ? ” 

“Oh dear, no! The people here are not half 
smart enough for that ! ” 

“Now, what do you mean by ‘smart?’ 
They are celebrated, and very beautifully dressed.” 

“ You can’t mean that seriously! Look at that 
extraordinary get-up of Mrs. Vavasour’s: she took 


The Sentimental Sex. 


4 6 

to writing fast novels late in life, and started a 
divorce scandal last year to qualify herself for 
the style. But even a scandal at five and forty 
doesn’t justify apple green chiffon and cardinal red 
ribbons ! ” 

“Do you know,” he said, “that you talk so 
fast, and in such a bewildering way, that I can’t 
understand half you say ? ” 

That was certainly one of the straightest snubs 
I have ever had. I respected the backwoodsman’s 
beautiful candour, but he began to pall a little. I 
yawned behind my fan, and said that I “must 
really go and talk to my friend. Miss Weath- 
erly.” 

“The one who can’t spell ? Oh, please, don’t 
go yet,” he said, quite ignorant of the fact that 
he had been boorish. “I want you to tell me 
what you do yourself, and not what all these 
other ladies do.” 

“I describe things,” I answered vaguely, 
wishing someone would come up and put an end 
to the catechism. 

“ What sort of things ? ” 

“Oh, people, and dresses, and plays, and pic- 
tures, and concerts.” 

(“Shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax, and 


Her Version. 


' 47 

cabbages, and things,” I wanted to say, but he 
had no humour, so I refrained.) 

“But not the music and the dresses here to- 
night ?” 

“Oh no,” I answered. He was getting on 
my nerves, and I grew reckless. “I never de- 
scribe the frocks at any house where I am invited, 
but very much grander ones which I see at the 
dressmaker’s. The British public doesn’t want to 
know how untitled people dress. ‘ The Duchess 
of Tooting looked well in black alpaca,’ or ‘Lady 
Greenwich was charming in rose-pink hopsack’ 
— that is what interests the public. You may de- 
scribe the costume of a music-hall ‘star,’ or of an 
American millionaire’s wife, but writers’ personali- 
ties or writers’ clothes interest no one but them- 
selves. Our upper classes don’t read, our lower' 
classes can’t, and the spaces between are filled by 
servants and factory hands, who devour anony- 
mous serial fiction, and subscribers to circulating 
libraries, who never know the authors’ names.” 

I was sitting down by this time, worn out by 
talking at him. I had a vague hope that if I grew 
sufficiently spiteful I should get rid of him. But 
he was not to be shaken off so easily. He stood, 
or rather loomed enormous, in front of me, block- 


48 


The Sentimental Sex. 


ing out the rest of the room. It vexed me to 
think that no one could see my charming toilette 
behind this mountain of baggy dress-clothes. 
The way in which he persistently stared down at 
me, as though I was something new and wonder- 
ful, wore me dreadfully, as did the solemn tone in 
which, as I finished speaking, he said : 

“ All this sounds very strange to me!” 

Clearly, talking wouldn’t get him off, and I 
began to wonder whether sulky silence would 
have the desired effect. I sat fanning myself and 
trying to obtain glimpses of the people on each 
side of him while he remained planted in front of 
me for several seconds. A little longer and I must 
have laughed, when luckily the backwoodsman 
broke the silence. 

“I have been so much interested in talking to 
you, and in listening to you, Mrs. Lambton,” he 
began, “that I have not yet asked you whether 
you know a literary lady in whom I take a very 
deep interest, I mean the poetess ‘Iris,’ author of 
‘ Rainbow Lights ’ ? ” 

Evidently he had not heard my name aright. 

I was interested and amused. It was entirely 
owing to the late Mr. Lambert that those two tiny 
grey and silver volumes had been published in an 


Her Version. 


49 


attractive form and tremendously advertised. 1 
remember he used to give “Rainbow Dinners” 
(as I called them) to pressmen at our house in 
Bayswater, and present each guest, when he 
had thoroughly well dined, with a copy of my 
book. 

“You mustn’t be too hard on my childish ef- 
forts,” I used to say (I wrote most of the verses 
when I was two or three and twenty) as the men 
took their leave, and I used to look up at them 
appealingly. A pretty hostess in adorable gowns, 
who gives you a capital dinner and first-class 
wines and cigars, and whose husband is a thor- 
oughly good fellow, able possibly to put you on 
to something in the City, is not the person to be 
ground to powder because of her youthful folly in 
writing verses. 

“Rainbow Lights” was quite a success in its 
way, and, when published with my portrait, 
brought me almost as many offers of marriage as 
though I had been a convicted murderess. What 
was more to the point, it secured for me a good 
connection as a writer of words for songs, little 
commissions which helped to bring grist to the 
mill. But since I have lost my husband, and with 
him my money, I have noticed that people don’t 


50 


The Sentimental Sex. 


gush to me about my “lovely verses” as they 
used formerly to do. So that the backwoodsman’s 
tone of reverent enthusiasm when he alluded to 
my work came as a surprise. 

He was asking me again whether I knew 
“ Iris,” and I admitted having met her. 

“I came here to-night on the chance of seeing 
her,” he said, speaking very low and growing as 
red as Mrs. Vavasour’s ribbons. “Do you think 
she is at all likely to be here ? ” 

“ Very likely,” I answered. “But she won’t 
stay late. She is too careful of her complexion.” 

“Ah, you mustn’t speak in that satirical sort 
of way about her,” he said gravely. 

“ Is she a great friend of yours ?” I asked. 

“I hope she is a friend of mine, but I have 
never yet had the happiness of meeting her. I 
know her poems and her features by heart, 
though. Do tell me about her; how is she likely 
to be dressed ? ” 

“Very smartly in white satin, I expect. She 
spends all her money on her back, as so many of 
us literary women do.” 

He frowned a little, as though my flippancy on 
such a sacred subject pained him. 

“Will you tell me how long she has been a 


Her Version. 


5i 

widow,” he asked then, with ill-suppressed eager- 
ness. 

“Just fourteen months. But I don’t think, Mr. 
Van Starr, she has the least intention of marrying 
again.” 

“My name is Vansittart, Niel Vansittart,” he 
said, and I knew who the man was at once! 

One of those funny offers of marriage was from 
Australia. A Mr. Niel Vansittart had favoured me 
with his name, age, family history, and several 
awkwardly expressed pages about the state of his 
feelings. This was rather more than two years 
ago. I remember that there was an odd genuine 
sort of ring about the letter which rather touched 
me at the time. The writer was clearly a lonely 
man, living out in the wilds somewhere, and 
knowing nothing of the world. Moreover, he 
had bought up every copy of my poems which 
appeared in Melbourne with my portrait, and Mr. 
Lambert, who said it was good for trade, per- 
suaded me to write the misguided young man a 
little note. I forget how I worded it, but I know 
I wrote in the high falutin’ style I knew he would 
expect of me, while at the same time I got my 
publishers to stop' the correspondence by telling 
him that I was married. 


52 


The Sentimental Sex. 


And this was Mr. Niel Vansittart! 

He knew that I was a widow and was longing 
to meet me, had come to-night for that express 
purpose — it was really quite romantic! 

But the inevitable touch of prose came in with 
the fact that while, as he said, he knew my fea- 
tures by heart, he did not in the least recognise 
me, although to-night I was in my best clothes 
and looking quite my prettiest. 

Probably he expected his “Iris” to walk on 
air, and wear dishevelled locks, and an eye “with 
fine frenzy rolling.” 

I was really curious to know what he did ex- 
pect, so I asked him. 

“You tell me you have never seen Mrs. Lam- 
bert,” I said, “but only portraits of her. Yet you 
must have formed some ideal of her, and as I 
know her, I should very much like to hear it.” 

He seemed charmed at the chance of being ex- 
pansive on the subject, and as the seat beside me 
was then vacant, he dropped heavily into it, and 
began at once. 

“She is most beautiful,” he said, “and I al- 
ways imagine her very tall and slender, and gentle, 
and sweet-voiced, with dreamy eyes, you know, 
and a lot of fair hair. I know a great deal about 


Her Version. 


53 


her — the sadness of her early life, the cruel trials 
she had, and how splendidly she came through 
them. I don’t mind telling you, Mrs. Lambton, 
that she is my ideal of womanhood : intellectual, 
refined, and lovely, full of sympathy, full of soul, 
brimming over with feeling and poetry and beau- 
tiful thoughts — a creature far too delicate and 
high-strung and sensitive to endure rough con- 
tact with the world.” 

I hardly knew how to take it. It was so odd, 
hearing some kind of a dead self described. For I 
suppose I was something like that once, thirteen 
or fourteen years ago. 

“I hope you won’t be disappointed when you 
meet her,” was all I could find to say. “And I 
think it will be far better, for your ideal’s sake, if 
you never do meet her. Then you can always 
think of her like that, and smoke pipes by the fire 
dreaming of her perfections, and thinking what 
you have missed. Whereas in real, matter-of-fact, 
everyday life ” 

“Well?” 

“Well, you know what it is to wake from a 
vague but beautiful dream ? You can’t go to sleep 
and evoke it again.” 

He was not to be persuaded. He sat by me, 


54 


The Sentimental Sex. 


gushing about his ideal of myself, until I grew 
weary of my own name. His capability for en- 
thusiasm was extraordinary — I believe it is their 
sentiment and enthusiasm which keeps men 
young. This man looks fully his age — and if I 
remember his letter aright, he must now be thirty- 
one or thirty-two — but in himself he is years 
younger than I. All the trees are green to him 
yet, and “every goose a swan” and “every 
lass a queen.” The ill-dressed crowd to-night 
appeared to him the very cream of fashion, the 
self-assertive mediocrities literary and artistic 
giants. I have little doubt that he thought me 
five-and-twenty, radiantly lovely, and he clearly 
ranks “ Iris ” as one of the Immortals, on the same 
plane with Byron, Shelley, and Swinburne. 

It must be very delightful to be bubbling over 
with belief like that. People with red skins and 
black hair are usually buoyant; but no woman of 
thirty-one, however red her skin and black her 
hair, could ever be so reverent, so guileless, so 
much in earnest, and so utterly free from self-con- 
sciousness, as this giant baby of a backwoodsman. 

His exuberant youthfulness — and he is really 
younger than any London child I have ever met 
— and overflowing sentinient made me feel a hun- 


Her Version. 


55 


dred by comparison. He even believed in the 
claret-cup at the refreshment-table, and urged me 
to partake of it. 

At a quarter to twelve, having been quite un- 
able to shake him off, I announced my intention 
of going home. 

“If you were an ordinary Londoner,” I ex- 
claimed, “I should say I was ‘going on some- 
where else.’ But as that wouldn’t impress you, I 
shall just tell the truth, that I’m tired, and going 
home.” 

He accompanied me to the door and begged 
to be allowed to see me to my cab. When I 
came out of the cloak-room, wrapped in a black 
velvet cloak with a most becoming black lace 
hood, I found him hanging over the staircase 
waiting, looking very impressive, in an elephan- 
tine manner, in a huge, fur-lined overcoat. 

He came forward eagerly to meet me. 

“I shall go home to my hotel now,” he said, 
as he accompanied me downstairs. “I don’t 
take any interest in the affair now you’re going. 
I wonder, Mrs. Lambton, if you would let me 
come to see you? Perhaps you may think me 
very audacious for asking, as I don’t know Mr. 
Lambton. But you would be conferring a great 


The Sentimental Sex. 


56 

favour upon me if you would let me come and 
talk to you.” 

“About ‘ Iris ’ ?” 

“Well, yes, about ‘Iris’ — and other things.” 

We were at the doors by this time. There 
were plenty of cabs outside, and as he left me 
for a moment to summon one, some impulse 
prompted me to take one of my cards from my 
pocket and scribble the word “Iris” underneath 
my name “Mrs. Lambert.” As I finished, the 
swing doors opened to admit him, and he helped 
me very carefully into my hansom. 

“Where shall I tell him?” he asked, leaning 
over the cab, and looking rather handsome in an 
ox-eyed and beefy sort of way. 

“Devonshire Mansions, Westminster.” 

“ And may I come and see you ? ” 

“I am at home on second and fourth Thursday 
afternoons. Here is my card.” 

“Thank you, thank you! ” he exclaimed grate- 
fully. Then he squeezed my hand in his enormous 
paw until my fingers ached and my rings went 
into them, and gave the direction to the driver. 

As he stood at the edge of the pavement, 
raising his hat, and the cab began to move, I 
thrust my head out. 


Her Version. 


57 

“ Look at the card,” I said, and drew my head 
in again. 

He did so, and I never saw a man’s face 
change more than his did in the last glimpse I had 
of it. Whether he was disappointed or delighted 
I could not tell, but he was certainly stupefied. I 
was really afraid he would run after the cab and 
hang on behind, and I reached home in quite a 
little flutter of amusement. 

But that wore off, and as I sat before the look- 
ing-glass in my bedroom recalling what he had 
said about “Iris,” I felt older than ever, and sick 
to death of it all. 

After all, if I had been his ideal “Iris,” and 
not myself, I shouldn’t be alive now. There are 
trials which harden when they do not kill, and 
such as I am, I am what the world, and the men 
and women in it and their laws, have made me. 
Caution, scepticism, self-repression, hypocrisy and 
reserve, these are the elements needed to preserve 
flawless virtue in a woman fighting her way in 
the world alone, if Nature has handicapped her at 
the outset with beauty and with feeling, and 

And after all, his ideal “Iris” would have 
been a terrible bore ! 


CHAPTER VI. 

HIS WAY OF TELLING IT. 

I have had to-night an experience so extraor- 
dinary, so romantic, and so delightful, that I don’t 
know how to talk of it. 

I have met “ Iris ” at last, met her and talked to 
her for a full hour without knowing who she was! 

And the most wonderful part of it is, that / 
fell in love with her at first sight , although she 
wasn’t in the least what I expected. 

I am not going for a moment to believe it was 
an accident, our meeting in this way. From the 
moment I read those lovely verses of hers, I knew 
she was the one woman in the world for me. 
Even when she seemed farthest away from me, 
married to another man, and living on the other 
side of the world, fate was shaping things so that 
she and I would come together in the end. 

And here we are both in London, and I am to 
see her next Thursday! 


58 


59 


His Way of Telling It. 

« 

How I’m going to live till then, I don’t know. 

It’s Tuesday night — no, thank goodness, it’s 
Wednesday morning — and to-morrow I shall see 
her. I was a fool not to recognise her. But I did 
recognise her. My heart knew her if my eyes 
were stupid enough to deceive me. 

When I got back to my hotel that night, I took 
the big photograph of her I carry about with me 
everywhere out of my portmanteau, and a copy of 
“ Rainbow Lights” with her picture in it. Then 
I sat down to study them both, together with the 
third version which I wear in a locket attached to 
my watch-chain, and tried to see in them her face 
as I remembered it to-night. 

Now that I know her as the original, of course, 
I can see the likeness. If she threw her head back 
just like that, and had her hair all fluffed out, and 
looked up under her eyelashes, and wore all that 
loose muslin about her neck, she would, I am 
sure, be exactly like that. 

But when that tall handsome woman intro- 
duced me to her to-night, pronouncing her name 
so that I thought it was “Lambton,” I wasn’t 
prepared to see her such a little thing, or so fash- 
ionably dressed, or with such a — what I should 
call liigh-society manner. 

5 


6o 


The Sentimental Sex. 


Her hair was all curled and frizzed and twisted, 
so that not a hair was out of place, just like those 
heads in the barber’s windows, and she was 
splendidly dressed in white satin skirts that stuck 
out a great deal, and a bodice that seemed slip- 
ping off her shoulders. 

I wish, now I know it was “Iris,” that she 
hadn’t worn it so low. Not but what her neck is 
lovely — but I didn’t want other men to see it. Of 
course it’s the fashion, and she’d look beautiful in 
any style of dress; but some of the celebrated 
women she pointed out to me looked simply dis- 
gusting: one was a network of bones with leath- 
ery skin drawn over them, kept together with 
blue ribbons; and another was more like a huge 
shaking pink blanc mange in a confectioner’s shop 
than a woman. 

It was an extraordinarily interesting gathering, 
though. . Poets, novelists, dramatists — I met one 
man who told me he had “lived on blank verse 
plays for ten years,” and he looked very well cov- 
ered too — and journalists, both men and women; 
in fact, all the leaders of modern thought in Lon- 
don. There were even some publishers, but not 
many of them, and they seemed rather sought after. 

One odd thing; each new celebrity I was in- 


6i 


His Way of Telling It. 

troduced to said something disagreeable about the 
last. For instance, I talked a good while to a 
splendidly-dressed and very fine-looking woman, 
who told me she was one of the most popular 
writers in England, and that her income on two 
books a year “ran into four figures.” I am 
ashamed to say, I’ve never heard of her. Then 
came the turn of a plump and pretty little lady in 
blue satin, with a large, intellectual head, and 
masses of the most lovely fair hair. She informed 
me that my first friend wrote “for the gutter,” 
but that she herself, although “foully abused” by 
the critics, because she would not pay them to 
praise her books, was the one writer of the cen- 
tury, equally popular in Windsor Castle and the 
humblest cottage, but especially in Windsor Cas- 
tle. After this came a third lady novelist, a jolly, 
good-natured sort of woman I liked directly. She 
told me that her books had the biggest sale 
known in England and America, and that the fair- 
haired lady in blue was “a conceited and impu- 
dent snob,” who sold her books by “filling them 
with vulgar personalities, and getting her brother 
to do the poetical padding.” 

It’s an awful pity celebrities are so spiteful 
about each other. 


62 


The Sentimental Sex. 


I was getting quite dizzy at meeting and listen- 
ing to so many clever people, when I was intro- 
duced to Mrs. Cholmondeley-Vereker. I had 
long ago lost sight of the man who brought me. 
Everybody seemed to talk to me, or rather at me 
for a few minutes, and then hand me on to some- 
one else: it was like a round game — I suppose 
it’s the fashion ; but I can’t help thinking it’s a 
pity that nobody keeps you long enough to 
know you. 

Mrs. Cholmondeley-Vereker began to talk 
about the celebrated people present. She wasn’t 
celebrated, so she said, but her husband was an 
exceedingly clever man, who had once written a 
book. As she seemed very good-natured, and 
made no unkind remarks about anybody, I ven- 
tured to tell her how much I wanted to know 
“Iris,” and to ask whether she were present. 
She lisped and spoke in an odd high, lackadaisical 
key, so that I couldn’t make out her answer; but 
she presently took me with her across the room 
to where a very slender little lady was stand- 
ing, looking, as I thought, like a lovely fashion- 
plate. 

And this was my “ Iris ” ! 

She is so pale, and so fair, and so small and 


His Way of Telling It. 63 

slight that she looks like some great artist’s unfin- 
ished sketch. 

Her little hand seemed lost in mine when she 
gave it me in parting, and her waist looks as 
though I could span it with one hand. Even her 
lips are pale, and there is only the very faintest 
blush-rose tint in her cheeks. A little, lovely, 
flower-like thing, much too fragile to face the 
rough winds of the world unsheltered. She looks 
as though I could break her with one finger, and 
when her voice comes it is like a sigh, so soft, 
and sad, and sweet. 

Her eyes look tired. Not that they are red or 
bloodshot, or anything but beautiful, but there is 
a strained look in them. It is easy to see that she 
is not happy. This world of dress and fashion 
and glitter of intellect, and all that, is not enough 
for a poetic soul like hers. It doesn’t satisfy her. 
I am sure that she wants reverent worship and 
tender love, someone to understand her and pro- 
tect her. When I think of a little creature like 
that bravely facing the world, and leading the 
cruelly-hard life she has led, and writing all that 
lovely poetry, tears come into my eyes. She is 
not strong enough, she never has been strong 
enough for the struggle. Your fine, hand- 


6 4 


The Sentimental Sex. 


some, powerfully-built women can take care 
of themselves, perhaps, but a little pale fairy 
with pleading blue eyes wants to nestle up to 
a big man’s heart and find warmth and shelter 
there. 

I didn’t quite like the way she talked at first; 
she seemed to be sarcastic and almost unkind 
now and then. But that was only manner, as I 
soon found out. When she became silent, just as 
though we were old friends, and 1 could look at 
her beautiful, tired face, I could see she felt out of 
her element. She didn’t know that I was a man 
who could understand her, and so she put on that 
little bright, hard way of talking, which I suppose 
the other men she meets expect of her. It was 
very amusing, no doubt, but it didn’t amuse me. 
You see, I didn’t know the people she talked 
about, and if I had I should have felt sorry for 
them. 

She found out who I was long before I knew 
her, and led me to talk to her of “Iris,” and my 
feelings towards her, listening so sweetly, and 
begging me not to over-rate her, otherwise when 
I met her I might be disappointed. Then, quite 
at the last, after I had put her into her cab and 
she was driving off to her lonely flat, she told me 


His Way of Telling It. 65 

to look at the card she had given me, and I saw 
who it was I had been talking to. 

“Mrs. Lambert” was on the card, and written 
underneath, in pencil, “Iris.” 

I don’t think I was ever more astonished in 
my life. 

But now I come to think of it, it was all a 
proof of her exquisite delicacy of feeling. As soon 
as she knew who I was, she must have naturally 
desired to know how my feelings stood towards 
her after two years, and she took this method of 
finding out before making herself known to me. 
At the last moment she gave me her name, and 
then drove off that she might not see my embar- 
rassment. 

For I had spoken out pretty plainly, telling her 
“ Iris ” was my ideal, and that I had come to Eng- 
land solely to find her. Even while she was put- 
ting her cloak on to go home, I was taking myself 
to task for half wishing my “ Iris ” might prove to 
be a little like this fragile and beautiful “Mrs. 
Lambton,” as I called her. 

Had she been displeased with my avowal of 
love, or promised to anyone else, she would not 
have asked me to come and see her to-morrow. 
Nor would she have looked down into my eyes 


66 The Sentimental Sex. 

over the cab with such an expression of ten- 
der merriment in those glorious dark-blue eyes 
of hers. 

And I am to see her to-morrow! 

What have I done to deserve such happi- 
ness ? 

I wouldn’t change places with an emperor! 


CHAPTER VII. 
niel’s story — continued . 

It is eight o’clock, and I have just come away 
from Devonshire Mansions, Westminster. 

During the first part of my visit I got im- 
mensely surprised and disgusted. 

In fact, I haven’t got over it yet. 

This London life takes it out of a man. The 
noisy streets, the traffic, the incessant bustle and 
life of the place, and then the talk! 

I’ve been so much vexed and downright 
shocked, as well as profoundly moved and excited 
this afternoon, that my head seems to be whirring 
and whizzing even now, and I don’t seem to be 
able to settle my thoughts. 

To begin with: when Mrs. Lambert told me 
she would be “at home” on Thursday, of course 
I thought she would be by herself by the fire, 
waiting for me. All the time I was mounting 
those interminable stone steps at Devonshire Man- 

67 


68 


The Sentimental Sex. 


sions I had that picture of her in my mind, sitting 
by the fire in some low easy-chair, and letting me 
quietly take my place beside her and hold her 
hand in the twilight, while I softly pleaded for her 
love. 

The reality was not a bit like that 

When I arrived outside the glass door of her 
flat, on my honour I thought I had made a mis- 
take and that there was a sawmill inside! But 
when I rang and the maid showed me along a 
very narrow and almost dark passage to the draw- 
ing-room at the farther end, I found the row was 
nothing but talk. 

Between thirty and forty people were all talk- 
ing ab the top of their voices so as to make them- 
selves heard over the din. It seems one of the 
oddest characteristics of clever people in London 
that they can talk through any amount of noise. 
For my part, ideas don’t come to me over quickly 
in conversation at the best of times, and when I 
can’t hear myself speak, and have one man bel- 
lowing in my ear to his neighbour about a new 
play, and another shouting at my elbow about 
politics or the last novel, I can’t think, much less 
talk, and I haven’t yet mastered the trick of talk- 
ing without thinking. 


Niel’s Story. 6 9 

The room was a good size, and I could see 
that the walls were painted very light green, with 
flights of swallows along the top, and that any 
amount of pictures, and brackets with statuettes 
and china ornaments, were stuck about them. 
There were two tall lamps with fluffy red silk 
shades, which gave a soft, pretty light; and al- 
though there was plenty of daylight left, the yel- 
lowish lace curtains were drawn close over the 
windows to block it out. 

As to the furniture, I couldn’t see any of it for 
the people at first, but it was, as I found after- 
wards (though I was too much excited to notice 
things properly), very pretty and tasteful, low, 
comfortable chairs, and lots of cushions and em- 
broidered table-covers, and curtains about the fire- 
place, and things of that sort; bookshelves (quite 
half-a-dozen) and a piano, and a great many pho- 
tographs stuck about in ornamental frames. 

But it was “ Iris/’ and not her furniture or her 
guests either that I had come to see, and I tried to 
elbow my way to her after the servant-girl had 
said: “Mr. Niel Vansittart,” at the door, and no- 
body had taken any notice beyond staring for a 
second or two. 

“ Iris ” was sitting in a low chair near the fire 


70 


The Sentimental Sex. 


just under one of the lamps, the red shade of 
which threw a glow on her as she made tea with 
a brass spirit-kettle which was on the stand close 
beside her. She was dressed in some soft, loose, 
white thing, velvet and chiffon she told me it was 
later; but all I knew at the time was that she 
looked more like a princess in a fairy tale than 
ever, with the pink light shining on her smooth 
fair hair and big blue eyes, and on the glittering 
rings on her fingers. 

If it hadn’t been for all those chattering people, 

I believe I should have dropped down on my 
knees before her then and there and smothered 
her dear little hands with kisses. 

But the next person my eyes fell on was a 
big, Spanish-looking, black-bearded, fellow, very 
handsome in an untidy, artist-like sort of way, 
who was sitting on the other side of her in a low 
chair, which he had drawn as close up to hers as 
he possibly could, so close that when he lazily 
turned his head to speak to her that black and 
grey mane of his (for the fellow was old enough 
to know better) was actually touching her shoul- 
der. 

Before I could edge my way to within speak- 
ing distance of '‘Iris,” my ears caught a speech 


Niel’s Story. 71 

he was making to her which made my blood 
boil. 

“Every healthy man who has tastes in that 
direction should have a harem,” he drawled, in a 
slow, superior sort of manner. “ It would greatly 
improve the species, and keep a lot of superfluous 
women out of mischief.” 

The woman sitting opposite to him, a horrible- 
looking, painted creature, with a hard mouth and 
a hooked nose, stared at him through a pair of 
gold-handled eyeglasses, and went off in a shrill 
scream of laughter. I was naturally waiting to 
hear “Iris” express her disgust, but she only 
tapped him on the back of his hand with her tea- 
spoon and said, quite sweetly: 

“What a horribly immoral old thing you are, 
Dicky. Will you have another piece of sugar ? ” 

“Two pieces, thanks,” the man she called 
Dicky answered, as if he’d been saying the most 
natural thing in the world. “Personally,” he 
went on, “I should like a harem very much, and 
I think I am one of the few Englishmen who could 
keep one in order. But, unfortunately, the law is 
against me, and only the very rich can afford to 
ignore the law. It’s a great pity,” he added, with 
a sigh. “The Eastern system is the only true 


72 


The Sentimental Sex. 


one. Women in the East don’t suffer from nerves 
and ftids, and political aspiratious, or religious 
mania. The only way to make women happy is 
for every man to keep as many as he can afford.” 

“I believe you speak the truth, Carruthers,” 
said another man, joining in the conversation at 
this point. 

At least I call him a man, but he was the 
most odious, effeminate-looking creature, with a 
repulsive waxen-white face, and about four or five 
inches of fuzzy hair sticking out all round it, and 
hanging over his coat-collar. 

“My heart bleeds,” this object began in a 
mincing voice that made me long to kick him, 
“ for the white-faced, love-lorn girls I see some- 
times in London parks, in London omnibuses. 
Their hollow cheeks and wistful eyes, and the 
look of weary and unsatisfied longing about their 
blighted beauty cries aloud that the thing they 
lack is love. I long to pity them, to cheer and 
comfort them. But alas! bound in the chains of 
convention, I am dumb.” 

“Don’t cry, Mr. Morley,” “Iris” said. “It 
will spoil your eyes. And I daresay the girls only 
want their tea. Will you have a crumpet ? ” 

“I thank you, I do not eat them. It may 


Niel’s Story. 


73 


sound to the world merely an aesthetic lament. 
But I cannot bear to see the blossom of a fair 
maid’s beauty fade and wither upon the stem for 
need of love’s sunshine.” 

“Why don’t you and Mr. Carruthers start a 
High-Class Harem Agency in the West End ?” the 
woman with the eyeglasses asked, with another 
scream of laughter. “You could run it on benev- 
olent lines, you know, and issue a philanthropic 
prospectus with quotations from the Old Testa- 
ment. And if you could get one woman of title 
to join, it would soon be a big go.” 

“You may laugh,” the man they called Dicky, 
said gravely, “but I assure you things are tending 
in that direction. Women in London outnumber 
men by a most startling majority, and there is 
very little doubt that monogamy is doomed.” 

“Are you people ‘talking sexes,’” a pretty 
little fair woman here interposed, thrusting her 
head forward into the group. “And is Dicky 
talking disgustingly, as usual.” ' 

“I wonder you are not jealous, Mrs. Car- 
ruthers,” the tiling they called Morley said with a 
sickly smile. 

“I? Oh, I don’t mind Dicky’s monsense one 
bit. He used to lecture me on those subjects 


74 


The Sentimental Sex. 


when we were first married. But I soon got tired 
of them and left off listening, so he doesn’t do it 
at home now.” 

Every word of all this ribald talk I heard, and 
every moment I was waiting and hoping that 
“ Iris ” would summarily put a stop to it. 

But no! She sat there, pale and pure as a lily 
to all appearance, and actually smiled at the in- 
decent jesting that was going on round her. For 
my part, I grew hot with shame that such words 
should be spoken in her presence. If I could have 
had my way, I would have taken those two foul- 
tongued fellows by the scruff of their necks and 
dragged them from her presence. My fingers 
were tingling to do it, when, as “Iris” stared up 
and about her in that strained, wistful way she 
has, she caught sight of my head above an inter- 
vening group of people. 

Her face lit up at once with a lovely smile, 
and a faint blush gave the finishing touch to her 
beauty. 

“Ah, Mr. Vansittart!” she said, holding her 
hand out. “Make your way here. I am so 
pleased to see you. Will you take tea or coffee ? 
And can you find yourself a seat ? ” 

“I’ll have some tea, and I would rather stand,” 


75 


Niel’s Story. 

I said, and took my place against the corner of the 
mantelpiece where I could watch “Iris ” and speak 
to her when I wanted to. 

That detestable painted woman with the gold- 
handled eyeglass stared at me through it in a most 
brazen way, and then bent forward and whis- 
pered to “ Iris,” so that I could plainly hear her: 

‘ ‘ What a superb animal ! Who is he ? ” 

“Mrs. O’Malley Carter wants to know you, 
Mr. Vansittart, and to hear all about your Austra- 
lian experiences,” “Iris” said instantly, and the 
dreadful woman with the eyeglasses nodded and 
grinned at me. 

• The habit all these people have of using two 
names is very worrying when one isn’t used to it. 
I never know which name to call them by, and I 
always forget at least one of them. 

Mrs. O’Malley Carter fired off a lot of questions 
at me, and didn’t give me time to answer them. 
At last she ran herself out of breath just as she had 
asked me if I had “been to Battersea to see the 
pretty girls biking,” and whether I “ preferred ra- 
tional costume or the mystery of skirts ? ” 

“I very much dislike to see a woman doing 
anything unfeminine,” I replied, “and a woman 

out of woman’s dress is a thing I hate to see.” 

6 


76 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“Ah!” said Mrs. O’Malley Carter, then she 
gave me a long stare and grinned again. “Have 
you been in London long ? ” she asked, in the en- 
couraging tone people use in speaking to very 
small children. 

“ A week.” 

“ When you’ve been here a year you’ll proba- 
bly be used to the unconventionality of our up-to- 
date girls,” she said. “Do you propose making 
a long stay ? ” 

“That depends on others,” I answered. “I 
may be here for the rest of my life.” 

I looked hard at “Iris” as I spoke. She was 
listening, with a faint, polite smile on her face, but 
she said nothing, though of course she knew what 
I meant. 

“I suppose then,” Mrs. Carter went on, “that 
you’ve what they call ‘made your pile’ out in 
Australia, and are going to settle down and spend 
it in England ? ” 

“Something like that.” 

“With Mrs. Vansittart ? ” 

“There is no Mrs. Vansittart yet.” 

“Ah!” 

She stared at me fixedly again. 

“I’m afraid you’ll be setting our English girls’ 


77 


Niel’s Story. 

hearts in a flutter,” she said, shaking her gold 
eyeglass at me. “Girls are such silly, weak 
little things, and there are so few eligible bache- 
lors about with your appearance. Very big 
men have it all their own way with women. 
Haven’t you found it so? Ah, don’t deny it, 
or tell me any pretty stories. I know how / felt 
about men of your appearance when I was a 
girl.” 

Thank goodness she couldn’t be heard in the 
din that was going on. Her barefaced flattery 
and the way in which she ogled me made one 
feel positively sick. 

“Bicycling girls wouldn’t be in your line,” 
she continued reflectively. “You want someone 
clinging, and tender, and feminine — some girl so 
quiet and retiring that men usually overlook her. 
You must know my Eileen ; you and she would 
be friends at once.” 

“Iam much obliged to you, but ” 

“Oh, you needn’t be alarmed! The sweet 
child is just as shy as you — a regular mother’s pet. 
My other girls can take care of themselves, but 
Eileen is still a baby, poor lamb! Mr. Morley, 
find me my little Eileen : she is sure to be in some 
dark corner of the room.” 


The Sentimental Sex. 


78 

“With a man!” Mr. Carruthers whispered to 
“ Iris,” and I heard him. 

A few moments later Mr. Morley returned, 
bringing with him a pretty young girl, who ap- 
peared to be about nineteen, very slight and unde- 
veloped in figure, and dressed in a simple, almost 
nursery style, in dark blue serge and light blue 
ribbons. She had a lot of auburn hair with red 
gleams about it, a weak little mouth, a freckled 
skin without any colour, and large hazel eyes 
with a sort of childish stare in them. 

She looked timidly at me and blushed, and 
smiled when her mother introduced her as “my 
youngest pet,” and she didn’t seem to have any- 
thing to say for herself at first. 

When she began to talk (for I left it to her) 
she told me she “ almost worshipped Mrs. Lam- 
bert,” and I warmed to her at once. 

“ ‘Iris’ is so clever and so kind as well as so 
beautiful,” Miss Carter said. “ She has been very, 
very good to me. I do typewriting, you know, 
just a little, not exactly for a living, for, of course, 
mamma wouldn’t let me do that , but it all helps. 
And Mrs. Lambert has often given me work. It 
seems quite a pity that she always means to re- 
main a widow, doesn’t it ? ” 


79 


Niel’s Story. 

Before I could answer, there was a movement 
in the group close about “Iris.” The fair-haired 
girl they called Mrs. Carruthers appeared to be in 
a state of great excitement and delight as she 
pulled along by the hand a short, handsome 
woman in a splendid fur cloak, who was laughing 
and chattering as she came. 

“Iris” seemed very much pleased to see this 
lady, whom she greeted as “Frank,” and Mr. 
Carruthers half rose to offer the newcomer his chair. 
But she waved him away and dropped down on 
her knees by the little tea-table to talk to “Iris.” 

“ Such news!” she cried. “I’ve just told 
Betty Carruthers. You’ll never guess! Maud 
Western has bolted from her husband again ! ” 

There was a chorus of exclamations, and 
everybody crowded round to hear. 

“ The funniest part of it all is,” the lady in the 
fur cloak went on, “that Carlisle Western had in- 
vited this very man to dine with him and his wife 
at their cottage at Weybridge on the same evening 
that they eloped, and he left his office an hour 
earlier in order to be at home to meet him ! But 
the other man got there first, and when the hus- 
band arrived, there was no wife, no friend, and 
worst of all, no dinner! ” 


8o 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“And the shops close so early at Weybridge, 
too!” murmured Mrs. O’Malley Carter. 

“But, dear, you haven’t told us his name 
yet,” said “Iris,” who, I must say, appeared just 
as pleased and amused as anyone else over this 
horrible story. “ Who is the vile seducer ?” 

“Oh, I don’t think he’s that! His name is 
Drogo Warrington, just the name for that sort of 
thing, isn’t it ? ” 

“How interesting,” murmured “Iris” in a 
voice which sounded suddenly hard and mechan- 
ical. “I used to know him once. Take off your 
cloak, dear, and tell us all about it.” 

“ It’s awfully rough on Western,” observed a 
pale, old-young man with light hair and white 
eyelashes, who formed one of the group; “be- 
cause, you see, her first husband divorced her on 
Western’s account, and Western had to pay heavy 
damages. He wouldn’t be likely to get as much 
back as he paid for her, because they’ve been 
married ten years, and you must allow for wear 
and tear. ” 

“ Warrington’s run through all his money and 
has got a wife of his own whom he keeps dark 
somewhere, so Western will get left anyhow,” 
another man put in. 


8 1 


Niel’s Story. 

“ I hear he has gone completely off his head,” 
said the lady in the fur cloak, “and that when 
they show him the children he says: ‘Take away 
that bauble,’ or things to that effect. I’ve always 
thought him a silly-looking little thing, and a 
most unlikely person for a co-respondent. Though 
a man who’s been in the divorce court for years 
told me last week that co-respondents are frights 
as a rule, and that it’s a taste for curios that makes 
most women take up with them.” 

“ One thing is dreadfully tiresome! ” exclaimed 
Mrs. Carruthers. “Maud Western was coming 
to dinner with us to-morrow, and now of course 
she can’t come, and we shall be just thirteen at 
table without her. I must get someone else. It 
won’t do to know her now for a little while, until 
one gets used to the idea and can pretend to for- 
get all about it. She had lived down the first 
running away, and had had so many children as 
to seem quite respectable. And then, being a 
novelist, it seemed almost proper and natural that 
she should elope with Mr. Western since he was 
a publisher. But this is quite different — Mr. War- 
rington not being even literary, and being mar- 
ried, too, so that she can’t ever settle down 
and be Mrs. Warrington. One must draw the 


82 The Sentimental Sex. 

line somewhere, and we shall really have to 
drop her.” 

“I admire her,” put in her husband, “for fol- 
lowing her natural instincts. But she ought to 
have outlived them at forty-five.” 

“Are you, too, amused at all this?” I asked 
in a low voice of the young girl, Eileen Carter. 

She was listening with all her ears and laugh- 
ing, but when I spoke she blushed and hung her 
head. 

“I — I thought it was rather odd and funny,” 
she faltered. 

“And did you know this lady well?” 

“Oh yes. She was a great friend of every- 
body here, and her husband too. She is Mr. 
Carruthers’ second cousin, and his wife’s dearest 
friend.” 

“And he, and she, and you can actually laugh 
at such a story of a woman’s disgrace, and one 
man’s wickedness and another man’s misery ? 
What! When this Mrs. Western has left her 
home and her little children and run away with a 
married man, and her husband has gone mad with 
grief and shame, you can think it funny and amus- 
ing ? Why, you oughtn’t to hear of such things 
at your age, much less laugh at them.” 


Niel’s Story. 83 

I had unconsciously raised my voice, for I 
meant what I said and forgot the drawing-room 
modulation necessary. When I stopped, I found 
there was a sudden hush, and everybody was 
staring at me. To make things worse, Eileen 
Carter began to cry. 

“Was Mrs. Western a friend of yours, may I 
ask?” the puppy with the white eyelashes in- 
quired in an extremely offensive, patronising tone. 

“No, sir, she was not,” I answered. “But 
even if she had been, I don’t think I should have 
been amused to hear of her disgrace.” 

“Snubbed, by Jove!” the youth said half un- 
der his breath, sticking his glass in his eye, and 
smiling at me. “ Your sentiments, sir,” he went 
on aloud with great gravity, “do equal credit to 
your head and heart. As somebody says in some 
play: ‘ There is nothing in the world so noble as 
a man of sentiment!’ And now, my dear Mrs. 
Lambert, having heard an interesting scandal, and 
a still more interesting lecture, and sunned my- 
self in your sisterly smile and sipped your Ceylon 
tea — good alliteration that, isn’t it ? — I will take 
my leave, a sadder and a wiser man.” 

They seemed to be all on the move after that, 
but I meant to stay them out, so I stuck where I 


The Sentimental Sex. 


84 

was. Of course I was sorry I had made that girl 
cry. She seemed a nice girl, if that horrible 
mother of hers hadn’t thrown her at my head in 
that barefaced way; but I felt no remorse for driv- 
ing the visitors away, as I evidently had done. 
The sooner “Iris’s” rooms were cleared of such 
people the better. Very soon only three or four 
were left, including Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers and 
the lady “Iris” had called Frank, but whose 
name, as I afterwards found, was Mrs. Francis. 

Before she left, the O'Malley woman had thrust 
a card into my hand and begged me to come to 
her “second Wednesdays.” 

“You have made such an impression on my 
dear Eileen,” she said in a hissing whisper as she 
squeezed my hand tightly in parting. “And the 
dear child hardly looks at a man, as a rule. I 
think you were quite right to speak out as you 
did just now. In literary and artistic society it is 
such a refreshing change to meet any one so de- 
lightfully proper and conventional as you. I only 
hope London life won’t spoil you and make you 
original and paradoxical and wicked, like the rest 
of us. Good-bye, dear Mr. Vansittart, and be 
sure you come next Wednesday.” 

<* I thought the Carruthers man never would go. 


Niel’s Story. 85 

He lolled in that low chair, drinking cup after cup 
of tea, until I longed to throw him out of window, 
and when he did get up at last, he struck a pic- 
turesque attitude against the mantelpiece and 
began to lay down the law again. 

“Some one ought to marry Eileen Carter,” he 
said, “or she will end by eloping with the dust- 
man or joining the Salvation Army. Whenever 
she is introduced to a new man, she has, ‘Oh, 
please, sir, won’t you marry me ? ’ writ in every 
line of her face.” 

“Of course her mother has six girls, and that 
is a dreadful responsibility,” his wife put in. 
“And the men they meet are getting so dread- 
fully sly and wide-awake it isn’t easy to get so far 
as even a breach of promise action against any one 
of them.” 

“The modern man grows more difficult to 
marry every day,” observed Mrs. Francis. “But 
at least a dozen are dying to have you, my sweet 
‘Iris.’ Ta-ta, and be good until we meet at the 
Cholmondeley-Verekers next Sunday.” 

After she had gone, Mrs. Carruthers, who 
seemed very young and had funny little school- 
girl manners, glanced at me. 

“ I did want to talk to you, ‘ Iris,’ ” she beggn, 


86 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“ but your friend, Mr. Vansittart, looks as though 
he wanted to get rid of all of us. Perhaps he has 
something to say to you ?” 

I was tired of her and of all of them, so I took 
up the challenge. 

“ I have something to say to Mrs. Lambert/'* I 
said; “and I have come all the way from Aus- 
tralia to say it.” 

Five minutes later “Iris” and I were alone 
together at last. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

niel’s story — continued . 

At first Iris was very quiet. 

She leaned forward in her chair with her chin 
in her hand, staring into the fire and taking no 
notice of me at all. 

There was something in the droop of her head 
and in her whole attitude which showed me that 
she was very tired and low-spirited. Only a few 
moments before she had been laughing and smil- 
ing and full of vivacity as she said good-bye to her 
guests. But now the slight flush of excitement 
had faded out of her cheeks, and I noticed for the 
first time that day how pale she was and how 
thin. 

Presently she gave a long sigh and looked up 
at me where I stood a little way off, watching her 
in silence, my heart full of love and pity. 

“Why, Mr. Vansittart, how rude you will 
think me!” she exclaimed. “ But I had so many 

87 


88 


The Sentimental Sex. 


people here to-day that I am tired. Come and sit 
by the fire. Shall we have some fresh tea made ? 
I have half-an-hour to spare before I dress to dine 
out and go on to a first night afterwards.” 

'‘Why do you go out at all if you are so 
tired ? ” I asked as I took the seat she offered me. 

“It is business. I am dining with an editor’s 
wife, and I go to the theatre to criticise the per- 
formance and notice the dresses.” 

“Shall you enjoy yourself?” 

She turned surprised blue eyes upon me. 

“Dear me, no!” she answered, “I very sel- 
dom enjoy myself ; but then I don’t expect to, so 
that I am not disappointed. I thought this after- 
noon was rather amusing, didn’t you ? or were 
you really too much shocked ? Mr. Vansittart do 
get me that bottle of salts from the mantelpiece. 
Thanks! My head aches a little.” 

“ It was all that talk.” 

“ I suppose so. And the news. It’s odd, too, 
that one should mind such things — after all those 
years! ” 

She spoke very low and more, as it seemed, to 
herself than to me. As the words died upon her 
lips, she leaned back in her chair and clasped her 
hands above her head. 


Such a tired little thing she looked, and there 
was actually a tear shining on her long eyelashes. 

At sight of that I could keep quiet no longer. 

“You are unhappy about something ! ” I blurted 
out. “ I wish you’d tell me. Telling things does 
one good. And I’ve come over from Australia 
simply in order to be your friend — and more than 
your friend, if you will let me.” 

She turned her head towards me with a faint 
smile. 

“ What! You haven’t forgotten all that yet?” 

“ Forgotten ! Forgotten what I’ve been think- 
ing of for two years and a half? All that time 
your image has been hourly in my mind ” 

“ Ah, but it was the wrong image ! You didn’t 
recognise me when you saw me.” 

“ But I fell in love with you.” 

“All the time you were raving about ‘ Iris ’ ? ” 

“ Because ‘ Iris ’ was you.” 

“Why, my dear Mr. Vansittart, you have only 
met me twice, and on both occasions you have 
been in a perpetual state of shock. Last time it 
was what / said, and this time what my friends 
said which got on your nerves.” 

“ It wasn’t that,” I declared. “ It was the prof- 
anation of such loose talk in your presence.” 


90 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“ But it amused me.” 

“Not really. I can’t and won’t believe it. 
These people by whom you are surrounded are 
not fit to speak to you. Their coarseness and 
heartlessness must jar on your sensitive and poetic 
nature, though you are too kind to say so. You 
are like Romeo’s ‘ fair swan trooping with crows ’ 
among them.’' 

“ But if the swan is perfectly satisfied with the 
crows’ society ?” 

“You must not be, you cannot be ! You must 
leave them and come to one who understands 
you.” 

“And do you think that you understand 
me?” she asked, taking her hands from behind 
her head and sitting straight up in her chair to 
look at me. 

“Iam sure I do.” 

She kept on looking at me in the most tantalis- 
ing way, with an odd smile in her eyes. I can’t 
describe how pretty she looked — there is some- 
thing about “Iris’s” beauty which can’t be put 
into words. When she smiles at you like that, 
she looks like some lovely, mocking fairy, ready 
to vanish at a touch, and she fills a man with a 
mad longing to snatch her up and crush her in 


"Niel’s Story. 91 

his arms just to show her she is only a woman 
after all. 

“So you understand me!” she said in a soft 
half whisper. 

The blood went to my head with her teasing 
voice and the mischief in her eyes. I got up from 
my chair, and went down on my knees before 
her, and covered her little hand, which lay on the 
arm of her chair, with kisses. 

At first she didn’t take it away, but after a few 
seconds she spoke in a little, hard voice, which 
froze me and brought me to my feet in a moment. 

“Get up, please, Mr. Vansittart. This is very 
silly.” 

“I beg your pardon, ‘Iris!’ Don’t look so 
coldly at me. You can’t guess how much I love 
you! ” 

“ I think I can. I can generally estimate the 
value of that sort of love.” 

“ What sort of love ? What do you mean ? ” 

“The sort of love,” she answered scornfully, 
looking at me with a kind of cold fire in her blue 
eyes, “which manifests itself by passionate love- 
making to a woman who is unprotected.” 

“ If you would trust yourself to me you would 
never be unprotected any more. ‘ Iris,’ can’t you 
7 


92 


The Sentimental Sex. 


see that I worship you, that you have been my 
ideal for years, and that now I’ve met you, all I 
want in the world is to make you my wife.” 

I was shaking like a soldier lad at his first bat- 
tle, and the words half-choked me. But she 
seemed quite cool and quiet, and only smiled and 
shook her head. 

“Your wife!” she said. “Is that all you 
want? Why, Mr. Vansittart, I can imagine no 
worse fate for a man than to marry his ideal.” 

“Let me try,” I said, taking my former seat 
by her side, and very gently holding one of her 
hands between both mine. “ I know I am be- 
neath you in every way. You are so wonderfully 
beautiful, or brilliant and celebrated, and so much 
sought after and admired, and I’m only a great, 
rough fellow, with no particular cleverness, and 
no ideas in his head except his love for you. But 
do you think these sharp-tongued, worldly people 
who are about you could appreciate you as I can ? 
For two and a-half years you have been the ro- 
mance of my life. Out where I used to live, I’ve 
hardly seen a woman for months together; but I 
had your poems and your portrait, and your one 
little letter. You talk always about people being 
disappointed when they meet their ideals; but as 


93 


Mid's Story. 

soon as I met you I wished ‘ Iris ’ could be like 
you. If I could write beautiful verses like yours, 

I could tell you what I feel ; but any way, 1 can 
say this, that no love poetry I have ever read can 
say more than I feel for you.” 

She let her hand rest in mine and I held it 
against my lips. It was very cold, and soft as 
silk. 

“To think that I should be sitting here, next 
to you, and holding your hand,” I could not help 
exclaiming, “seems too good to be true. But, 

* Iris,’ dear, this hard-working, lonely life of yours 
must not go on. Now I know why luck came to 
me and I grew rich. It was so that I might be 
able to make a home in some sort of way worthy 
of you.” 

“ Are you rich ?” she asked curiously, but not 
as if she particularly cared. 

“Not rich compared with some men. I can 
manage to spend six or seven thousand a year 
without hurting myself or my capital. But I can’t 
bear to talk of that sort of thing to you.” 

“I like it,” she returned. “It is practical. 
And I’ve had to be very practical nearly all my 
life. Mr. Lambert spent about eight thousand a 
year. But then he hadn’t any capital at all, and 


/ 


94 


The Sentimental Sex. 


there is always so much more ready money in 
those cases.” 

She stopped short and looked thoughtfully 
across me into the fire. 

“How cold your hand is,” I whispered, as I 
held it against my lips. 

“Not colder than my heart, I assure you.” 

“I’ll never believe it, ‘Iris.’ Why do you 
fence yourself about with caution and reserve with 
me? I know and understand your real nature. 
How could you have written those lovely verses, 
full of passion and tenderness, if you had been 
cold?” 

And I tried to soften my voice so as to quote 
her own lines, and do them justice. 

“ Then let me learn in kisses of your soul my own is part, 

And with a dreamy languor hear the beating of your heart ; 
Forget all former sorrow, forget all future pain, 

And find a present Heaven within your arms again! ” 

“Iris” blushed all over her face and neck as 
she listened to her own words. 

“Did I really write like that?” she asked. 
“Of course it was years ago, and I hadn’t the 
least idea what I was talking about.” 

“ But you write poems still ? ” 

“ Because I get orders for songs, and I am too 


Mid's Story. 


95 


poor to refuse them. But you have no idea how 
difficult I find it to go on manufacturing ideas 
which came to me spontaneously in a state of 
mind out of which I have long since emerged. 
There were several reasons why ‘ Rainbow Lights ’ 
made some sort of a success. But to me, now, 
the lines seem stereotyped and silly when they are 
not absolutely risky.” 

I didn’t know what she meant by “risky,” 
and I couldn’t very well understand the drift of 
her speech, but I gathered that she didn’t find 
poetry-making easy now because she wasn’t in 
love. 

“ You mean,” I said, “that you are too sincere 
to write like that now that you don’t feel such 
things ? That there is no love in your life to in- 
spire you ? But when you belong to me all that 
will be altered.” 

“And you will inspire me to fresh efforts in 
the direction of erotic poetry ? ” she suggested in 
those soft, mocking tones of hers. “Do you 
really think that ? ” 

“I really think,” I said, venturing to smooth 
her beautiful fair hair, “that you are bound to love 
me, and that you won’t need to write any more 
verses unless you feel inclined. You are lonely 


The Sentimental Sex. 


96 

and unhappy because you want protection and 
sympathy. You pretend things, and talk in a 
way that isn’t natural to you because other people 
can’t understand your real poetic, tender, womanly 
self. You have been waiting with your heart 
closed within itself for the man who can under- 
stand you. Well, now he has come, and you can 
be yourself again.” 

That was a long effort, but I had got out what 
I meant to say, and had done it as I felt, pretty 
well. I haven’t a flow of language, but I was so 
much in earnest that that helped me, and besides, 
“ Iris ” was very easy to talk to as she listened so 
quietly and so well. 

She smiled at me again when I finished speak- 
ing, and did not seem to resent or even to notice 
my caressing touch on her hair. “I think I 
should like you as a friend,” she said, “you would 
be such an entire change from the others; and I 
love change. If we could part just at this mo- 
ment, I should think of you almost tenderly. But 
the whole thing will be spoiled if we go on meet- 
ing. A man who marries a woman about whom 
he cherishes any high sentiments simply courts 
disillusion. Go back to Australia, Mr. Vansittart, 
or if you stay in London to get spoiled, content 


Niel’s Story. 97 

yourself with my books and my pictures and my 
letters — and avoid me.” 

She rose as she spoke, and stretched out her 
hands in a little movement that was something 
between a shudder and a shrug, as though 
she wanted to shake off some idea that was dis- 
tasteful to her. I caught her hands as she pushed 
them out and held them up against my heart. 

“Don’t suppose fora moment,” I said, “that 
I consider that a refusal. I have come over to 
marry you : we are meant for each other, and you 
will be my wife as sure as we both stand here. 
The force of my love is strong enough to sweep 
away all obstacles. But there are no obstacles. 
There is nothing to prevent you from marrying 
me to-morrow.” 

“It isn’t only for my own sake that I won’t 
have you,” she said, “but for yours. My cold- 
ness would kill you. I am as cold as ice.” 

“ There is fire burning underneath the ice.” 

“There was. But the fire has gone out long 
ago. 

“It will come again. * Iris,’ when shall we be 
married ? ” 

“Never, Mr. Vansittart! Please let my hands 
go : I have to dress for dinner. ” 


The Sentimental Sex. 


98 

“I can’t go until you answer me. Shall it be 
this week or the next ?” 

“It shall never be. I have tried marriage, and 
I don't like it.” 

“ You must forget all that. You were uncon- 
genially married — it must have been a dreadful ex- 
perience. But with deep love on both sides ” 

“ There is no love on my side.” 

“ But there will be.” 

“So Mr. Lambert said. But there wasn’t.” 

“ Forget all about Mr. Lambert. Only re- 
member that I adore you, and that I am going to 
make you perfectly happy.” 

“I don’t believe there is anyone alive capable 
of doing that.” 

“You don’t know what happiness is because 
you have never been loved as I can love you. 
You want absolute devotion ” 

“It would tire me dreadfully! — Your every 
wish forestalled, your every movement guarded, 
as the Scripture says, ‘ lest at any time you hurt 
vour foot against a stone.’ ” 

“I want nothing of the sort. I am not used 
to it, and I shouldn’t like it. I want freedom and 
a settled income, and as I can’t possess the two 
together, I mean to stick to freedom.” 


99 


Niel’s Story. 

“You shall be perfectly free with me.’' 

‘ ‘ And * guarded ’ all the time ! ” 

“ Only watched from a distance.” 

“‘Shadowed,’ as though I were a ticket-of- 
Ieave person! I can imagine nothing more de- * 
pressing. No, Mr. Vansittart! No, no, no! 
Please leave off teasing me and go! ” 

“When shall I come again ?” 

“You can come Thursday week, my next ‘at 
home’ day, if you like.” 

“And meet all those horrible people again ?” 

“You would not find Eileen Carter horrible at 
all. She is quite ready to turn on any sentiment 
you like to please you.” 

“What is Eileen Carter or any other wom- 
an to me, except you ? I will not meet those 
people again. I will come when you are 
alone.” 

“Those people are my friends, and I do not 
receive gentlemen alone.” 

“ But you will receive me because you are go- 
ing to marry me, and we must meet to talk over 
our arrangements. I will come to-morrow after- 
noon at three. Will that suit you ? ” 

“ No. I am going out to luncheon.” 

“Then I will come in the morning.” 

L. of C. 


100 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“Iam too busy writing to see anybody in the 
mornings.” 

“But, as you will not need to earn any more 
money, that doesn’t matter. I will come at 
eleven.” 

“ You will not see me.” 

“Then I will wait outside the house until I 
do. My time is my own. What theatre are you 
going to to-night ? ” 

“ I shall not tell you.” 

“ I remember I heard you say it was the Court. 

I shall be there.” 

“Mr. Vansittart, you are going the way to 
make me detest you ! ” 

“Ah, don’t say that! I only want you to 
realise that you can’t get rid of me. You have 
shaped my life for more than two years; you have 
drawn me over the sea like a magnet; you want 
me, you belong to me, just as I belong to you and 
want you.” 

“ I don’t want you in the least little bit! You 
are hurting my hands and making me late for din- 
ner. You are only holding me by brute force, 
and you are simply boring me to death! ” 

“ Promise to see me to-morrow at eleven and 
I will go. Forgive me if I hurt your sweet little 


IOI 


Niel’s Story. 

hands, my darling. I forget how fragile you are. 
There: let me kiss your fingers and make them 
well. I may come at eleven ? ” 

“Oh, you may come, but I don't expect you 
will see me. Good-night, Mr. Vansittart.” 
“Good-night, my sweet angel.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

HER VERSION. 

The more I think of it the less I can under- 
stand Drogo Warrington going off with Maud 
Western. 

Unless it be that he likes sharp contrasts. That 
Western woman is, I devoutly hope, the very an- 
tithesis of me in everything — mind, morals, and 
appearance. 

The back of her neck is so dreadfully thick that 
when I have sat behind her at the theatre I have 
always foreseen she would be in the Divorce Court 
again. 

At dinner to-night they told me she is quite 
besottedly in love with Drogo. Surely her Cock- 
ney way of speaking will jar upon him : he used 
to like my little “mouse-like” voice so much. 

I really feel I hate that nasty, thick-necked, 
black-haired woman ! I broke with Drogo eight 
years ago, but it always soothed me to think that, 
102 


Her Version. 


103 


as he was married and never met his wife, there 
was no woman to take my place in his mind. That 
was one of my last remnants of silly sentiment, I 
suppose. 

Anyhow, it’s gone now, and Drogo has got a 
great, massive, expansive, demonstrative substi- 
tute for the little fair-haired girl, whose heart he 
nearly broke when she had one to break. 

Of course I have had a great many disagreeable 
experiences since, including the culminating dis- 
appointment of being married. But I sometimes 
think the most terrible half-hour of my life was 
that day in the London lodgings, when I stood 
before the bedroom looking-glass in my white silk 
bridal dress, and the dirty little servant handed me 
a card upon which was written : 

“Mrs. Drogo Warrington.” 

How ecstatically happy I had felt that morning, 
poor little fool! 

I think I really believed in the fairy-tale notion 
that being married would make me “happy ever 
after.” For four years I had been so crazily fond 
of Drogo, quivering all over at the sound of his 
footstep on the stairs, lying awake all night re- 
membering his kisses, and thrilling from head to 
foot with a warm delight at the mere touch of 


104 


The Sentimental Sex. 


his hand on my arm, that it was but natural the 
thought of being always with him should seem 
like Paradise to me. 

His wife was a Terror! 

When I thought of it all afterwards in cold 
blood — I easily understood his concealment of his 
marriage. 

She was one of those women who pride them- 
selves upon being ‘ ‘ smart ’’and going to the ‘ * best 
places” for everything they wear. She had the 
best hair-dye, and a great deal of it, and the best 
day-light rouge, and the best gown and hat and 
gloves and boots to be had for money, together 
with the worst possible manners and the worst 
possible heart. 

When she forced her way into the bedroom 
to gloat over me in my wedding-dress, she 
carried a tiny, long-haired terrier over her arm. 
That type of woman always ‘ 4 adores” dogs, or, 
as she calls them, “dear, sweet, wee, little bow- 
wows.” But she only adores the latest fashion- 
able breed. 

Our interview was a memorable one, and I 
didn’t faint. But I have an idea that my heart 
broke. 

Still, I had enough left to be bitterly hurt more 


Her Version. 


105 

than once in after years, until I luckily lost the 
capability of feeling. 

And now Drogo has gone off with Maud West- 
ern, and if his wife and Maud's husband sue for 
divorces, that Western woman may some day be- 
come Drogo’s wife. 

I am really astonished to find that I can’t bear 
the idea of it! 

The backwoodsman is growing very tire- 
some. 

He came to my “at home” to-day, towering 
over everybody and looking terribly out of it. He 
was most indignant at finding so many people, 
and sulked in a corner, glaring at everybody who 
talked about anything but the weather. Finally, 
he got in the middle of the room and made moral 
speeches until he emptied it. 

As soon as we were alone, he assured me that 
he understood me perfectly, and asked me to marry 
him next week. 

How is one to treat such a person ? 

He has six or seven thousand a-year pocket- 
money, but he would be dear at that price. 

It is so preposterous of him to want me. 

Now, Eileen Carter would suit him per- 
fectly. 


io 6 The Sentimental Sex. 

Mrs. Carter threw her at his head this after- 
noon, and Eily was ready enough to be thrown, 
as usual. 

She is one of those little, tender, clinging, un- 
intellectual women, who never contradict their 
husbands, but frequently elope with their hus- 
band’s friends. 

I may not be sympathique, but I shouldn’t do 
that ! 

It is not that I am proud of my virtuous tem- 
perament. Heaven knows, it has never made me 
any happier, but rather the reverse ! If I had been 
less of a Puritan, I should have “gone off” with 
Drogo when I was two and twenty, been white- 
washed by the Divorce Court and a ceremony in 
a church or a registry office, and by this time 
have possibly settled down to the placid content- 
ment of a cabbage. 

But what we call vice and virtue are entirely 
matters of temperament, and I could as soon pick 
a pocket as not “run straight.” 

Heigho! 

I am dreadfully tired to-night, and ugly little 
shadows are forming perpendicular lines down 
my cheeks. 

J suppose I ought to be flattered because this 


Her Version. 


107 

sentimental backwoodsman has come all the way 
from Australia to marry me. 

He is quite certain that if I marry him I shall 
soon love him to distraction. 

How oddly popular among men is the belief 
that the relationship of marriage will turn the 
most indifferent of women into a Juliet. 

Whereas, in reality, nothing is better calculated 
to make a woman loathe a man she has previously 
tolerated. 

Of course I refused the backwoodsman, but he 
wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

He is altogether determined to get me, and I 
am dreadfully tired of working so hard and being 
always so short of money. 

If he could only make me fall the least lit- 
tle bit in love with him, it would make me 
feel young again, and do me all the good in the 
world. 

But he can’t. 

There is more in type than people think, and I 
can’t bear his type ! 

When I picture waking up in the morning, 
and seeing that dreadful, bristling black hair on 
the pillow, it makes my flesh creep! 

Every man I have ever cared a straw about has 
8 


108 The Sentimental Sex. 

been fair, and I could never have married Mr. 
Lambert if he hadn’t had a yellow beard. 

Why couldn’t the backwoodsman stay in Aus- 
tralia and worship me from afar ? 

I am certain that he is full of fine wearing 
qualities, sterling worth, and uncomfortable truth- 
fulness, and lofty ideals, and so on, but I don’t 
believe he could see a -joke to save his life. 

Anyone more inappropriate for me I can’t im- 
agine, and yet he wont see it! 


CHAPTER X. 


her version — continued . 

I am going to marry the backwoodsman ! 

He has been teasing me for six weeks now, 
and I have told him everything I could think of 
against myself in order to choke him off. 

But he won’t believe me, and sticks to his 
ideal in spite of everything. He won’t even be- 
believe that I am thirty-one, although I have 
referred him to the church where I was christened. 

It can't turn out well! 

He has taken up his quarters at the hotel im- 
mediately opposite, and spends his time watching 
Devonshire Mansions, and glaring through the 
window at everyone who calls. 

To please me, he has gone to a better tailor 
and wears reasonable boots. When we are out 
together, the way in which the women ogle up at 
him makes me blush for my sex. But he never 

109 


i io The Sentimental Sex. 

sees them, so absorbed is he in his infatuation 
for me. 

Argument is wasted upon him. Even telling 
him that if I do marry him it will be for his money 
produces no impression. 

It is always difficult to persuade a man that 
you are marrying him for his money. 

He simply can’t and won’t believe that a 
woman as a woman can be indifferent to him as 
a man, and the woman who isn’t tremblingly 
anxious to fall in love with the first man who 
courts her he dubs “neurotic.” 

Niel Vansittart is so thoroughly convinced that 
I shall love him passionately before we have been 
man and wife a week, that if I hadn’t been mar- 
ried before I might believe him. 

As it is — well, as it is, I wish to Heaven I were 
living in the days of chivalry. Then, a man enter- 
taining for me the exalted sentiments cherished by 
Mr. Vansittart could wear my colours at the tourna- 
ment, inscribe himself my true and faithful knight, 
write sonnets to my eyebrows, and occasionally 
kiss my hand in public : and all the while he 
would be comfortably married to some un-ideal 
little person who would darn his jerkins and bring 
up his family. 


Her Version. 


1 1 1 

This man is in love with me partly for my 
prettiness and partly because he has chosen, be- 
fore and after he met me, to ascribe to me a great 
many qualities which I don’t possess. 

Consequently, he is in love, not with me, but 
with a non-existent person. 

Frank called to-day to ask me whether the 
affair was settled. She invariably styles Mr. Van- 
sittart “The Noble Savage.” 

“Of course you’ll have to marry him,” she 
said over afternoon tea. “From the moment 
that I saw his eye and his chin on that first 
Thursday when he dismissed your ‘ at home ’ peo- 
ple, I knew he would marry you. The eye meant 
love and the chin meant getting what he wanted.” 

“Why should I marry again at all? You 
know the French novelist’s three classes of 
women: household angels, ‘bad lots,’ and vestal 
virgins. As I certainly don’t belong to either of 
the two first classes, and do not appreciate matri- 
mony, I was clearly meant for a vestal virgin.” 

“You’d have coquetted with the priests, 
though. No, dear. You are pretty, you are poor, 
you are over-worked, you are thirty-one. He is 
rich and handsome, and he has made up his mind. 
You will have to marry the ‘Noble Savage.’ He 


The Sentimental Sex. 


1 12 

will make you leave off cigarettes, and French 
novels, and face powder, and literary society, and 
he will take you to church, and to concerts at the 
Albert Hall. And perhaps sometimes, if you are 
good, you will go with him in a high-necked 
frock to the Imperial Institute and hear lectures by 
African explorers. Don’t make a grimace! You’ll 
kick at first, of course, but in time you will grow 
resigned and fat, and forget that you ever were 
clever. But you must let me come and dine with 
you sometimes. I’ll be very good, and eat instead 
of talking.” 

“ It’s a ghastly picture, and there’s a sickening 
element of likelihood about it. I had an idea — 
don’t laugh — I know it’s absurd — but I thought 
being very much loved by such a very youthful- 
natured and ingenuous sort of creature as the 
‘ Noble Savage,’ as you call him, might make me 
feel young again ! ” 

Frank shook her head doubtfully. 

“ I wouldn’t count too much on that if I were 
you,” she said. “ But take my advice. As the 
‘ Noble Savage ’ will never let you have a mo- 
ment’s peace until you are his wife, and as he is 
really a very good match, marry him and get it 
over. It’s the only thing to do with a man like 


Her Version. 1 1 3 

that. And it will make those O’Malley Carters 
so mad.” 

I took her advice, though not for her reasons, 
and this evening, when Mr. Vansittart called I 
fixed the day. 

His delight made me feel so sorry for him. 
Perhaps it may not turn out so badly after all. 
But I don't like the idea of it! 


CHAPTER XI. 


MRS. VANSITTART’S VERSION. 

The gods give us joy! The honeymoon is 
over! 

And oh! what an interminably long honey- 
moon! 

Talk about toujours perdrix — toujours mari , is 
infinitely more tedious. 

My one resource has been a mysterious nerv- 
ous headache, which is liable to attack me when- 
ever I absolutely crave for my own society. 

Niel is such a good creature — such a kind, 
lumbering, transparent, straightforward, loving, 
jealous, sentimental giant; but he has no conver- 
sation, and can only stare at me by the hour, and 
he nearly had a fit in Paris when I wanted to go 
to the theatre on Sunday. 

In Italy he hurried me past all pictures and 
statues that were not very well clad, and I was 
only allowed to look at popes and holy families. 

114 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 115 

He will scarcely allow a waiter to speak to me, 
and glares at a man for passing me the salt. 

At the Embassy ball in Vienna, he wouldn't let 
me waltz, and made me fill up the decolletage of 
my gown with lace. 

If I had any latent immorality in my nature, 
this system would bring it out. As it is, I don’t 
know whether to laugh or to cry. 

He is King Stork after King Log. Mr. Lam- 
bert let me do just as I pleased, spent a lot of 
money upon me, and was- quite contented if I 
smiled and looked pretty when he came home 
from the City in the evenings. 

But this man wants everything. My thoughts, 
my words, my dreams, my mind, and soul, as 
well as my little individual self, he considers ought 
to be his by divine right. I must adopt his relig- 
ion, his principles, his opinions, even his taste in 
art (including an admiration for Mrs. Hemans and 
Berlin wool-work), as well as his name. He 
doesn’t seem to realise that I am as old as he, and 
to the full as intelligent, that I have been thirty- 
one years forming such opinions as I may have, 
and that they are just as likely to be right as his. 

He has a complete set of stereotyped views, 
belonging chiefly to the “ Book of Beauty ” period, 


The Sentimental Sex. 


1 16 

which he considers appropriate for a woman, and 
these I am supposed to entertain. He has already 
begun to talk to me about his mother, who, it ap- 
pears, was a paragon of all the virtues, and whom 
he holds up as a shining example for one to imi- 
tate; and he has shown me (with great reverence, 
poor fellow !) an appalling daguerrotype of her, in 
which she is represented as a lantern-jawed person 
with side-curls and a mushroom hat. 

Whatever the mushroom-hatted lady did or 
said or thought, he would have me do the same, 
and in an outburst of deep feeling the other day, 
he confided to me that he had married me with 
her wedding-ring. 

I am sure he meant it as a great compliment, 
but as soon as I was alone, I took the ring off and 
popped it carefully away at the bottom of my 
jewel-case. Then I put my old Lambert ring on 
again, and felt immensely relieved at having noth- 
ing to live up to. 

Back in London at last, after a most uncomfor- 
table three months. I believe Niel enjoyed them 
amazingly ; but as I have left off talking to him for 
fear of shocking him, and am never allowed to talk 
to anyone else, I have almost lost the power of 
speech. 


Mrs. Vansittart's Version. 1 1 7 

It is May, and everyone will be flocking to 
town. We are in a hotel at present, but I want 
to take a nice, compact, little house in Kensington, 
furnish it after my own heart, and get a few amus- 
ing people about me. But alack-a-day! What 
shall I do with my lord and master ? In his opin- 
ion, a wife’s visiting list should be confined to her 
grandmother, her mother, and the clergyman of 
the parish. 

Why in the world can’t he take up golf, or the 
Stock Exchange, or cycling, or anything that 
would take him out of the house for a few hours 
at least every day ? 

I feel like Eve in the Garden of Eden, and 
should rejoice to make the acquaintance of a nice, 
chatty snake! 


CHAPTER XII. 


MR. VANSITTART S VERSION. 

Now that my wife and I are settled in London, 
I sometimes wonder to myself whether I shall ever 
get used to the life of it. 

It takes a lot to tire me, but London does it. 
I get tired and restless at once, though the thing 
doesn’t sound possible. 

I get sick of the dressing up and pottering about 
in and out of the brougham, in which there’s no 
room to stretch one’s legs, and hanging about in 
shops, and of the interminable streets and houses 
hemming one in on all sides. 

My wife is used to it and likes it. It makes 
her happy, she says, to have a little money to 
spend. She is too beautiful to go about by her- 
self, and I can’t bear to have her out of my sight, 
so I accompany her everywhere. 

Besides; she loves me so much she wouldn’t 
be happy if I didn’t. She doesn’t say much about 
118 


Mr. Vansittart’s Version. 119 

her feelings, but the alteration in her is wonder- 
ful. She never talks in that little hard way I 
didn't quite like now. In fact, she hardly talks at 
all, which is a proof we understand each other 
perfectly. I sit by her side in the brougham, or 
when she is reading in the evenings, and just put 
my hand on hers now and then to remind her of 
my love, and she looks up and smiles in the love- 
liest way without speaking. 

Then I am perfectly happy. 

What I’m afraid of is, that when our house is 
furnished completely — people, some of those 
friends of hers that I detest, for instance — will 
come and selfishly disturb us, not understanding 
that we are perfectly satisfied with our own so- 
ciety, and don’t need any other. 

I didn’t want to take the house at all. But 
when I said so after my wife had chosen it, she 
turned pale, and tears came into her beautiful 
eyes. Then I swore I would spend my life in it if 
it pleased her, and took it at once. 

It’s all right and snug, I suppose, but it isn’t 
half big enough to move about in comfortably. A 
place in the country with big grounds and horses 
and dogs is what I should like. I hinted as much 
to my wife, and she gave a little shudder at first, 


120 


The Sentimental Sex. 


and declared that the country gave her “the mis- 
erables.” But when I asked her if she couldn’t be 
happy anywhere with me , she said: “Of course,” 
and promised she would go and live in “ any out- 
of-the- world spot” I pleased, if I would let her 
“get tired of London first.” 

We’ve only been out visiting together once 
since we’ve been in our new house. It was 
among that literary and artistic set that I don’t 
like, and long before we got home I told my wife 
we would never again set foot in the house we 
had visited. 

The moment we entered the reception-room 
she was carried off from me, and I lost sight of 
her. It was the house of a well-known old land- 
scape-painter. A box of cigarettes was handed 
round half-way through the evening, and the 
women began smoking as well as the men. 

If there is anything I hate to see it is a woman 
smoking. I have often said so to my wife, and 
she has agreed with me. (She always does agree 
with me now.) The air was thick with tobacco, 
and the men were helping themselves freely to 
whiskies and sodas, and a music-hall performer 
was beginning to sing a rowdy song, and the peo- 
ple present to join in the chorus. 


Mr. Vansittart’s Version. 


1 1 1 


And this was a Sunday evening, and “Iris” 
had begged me to call with her to “ cheer up poor 
old Mr. Albertson, who lost his wife a year ago, 
and loves a little sacred music, as he is not strong 
enough to go to church ! ” 

I made my way to her to remove her from 
these coarse and unsuitable surroundings, which 
I naturally supposed would revolt her sensitive 
nature. But when I found her she was sitting in 
an arm-chair, surrounded by a whole string of 
men, and one of them, a puppy of an actor, was 
down on his knees before her, lighting his cigar- 
ette from hers ! She turned quite white when I 
told her it was time to go home, but she got up 
without a word, and sat quietly in the carriage 
during our long drive from St. John's Wood to 
Kensington, while I said how horribly pained and 
disgusted I had been, and how immeasurably be- 
neath her all these people were. 

Presently I felt her dear little head droop 
towards me. In the middle of my scolding I was 
touched beyond measure to find that of her own 
accord she had nestled up to me. 

I put both my arms about her and held her to 
my heart in perfect silence for the remainder of 
the journey. 


122 


The Sentimental Sex. 


Her gentle tenderness disarmed me. Recog- 
nising the justice of my fault-finding, she had 
wished to soften me. As if I could ever for one 
moment be hard towards her ! 

All the last part of the drive I was perfectly 
happy, realising that my beautiful little fairy and I 
were one in heart and thought beyond all need of 
words. 

But when we reached our door I found she 
was fast asleep. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


MRS. VANSITTART’S STORY. 

I have taken Eileen Carter to stay with us for a 
little while. 

Of course she will make love to Niel. She 
can’t help making love to any man about the 
place. But he is so fond of me that I don’t think 
it will matter, and besides, I believe he is really 
a little better than most men, and would not en- 
courage a girl to make a fool of herself. 

I am sorry for Eileen. 

Her mother has married again, a youth of six 
and twenty, who it was thought was courting 
her daughter Marian. Mrs. Carter hasn’t enough 
money to keep a husband and her daughters as 
well, so the daughters, poor, shiftless, half-edu- 
cated things, have all been tumbled out of the 
nest into the world. 

Eileen can’t do much but type-write, rather 
badly. She and her sisters have been trained as 

9 123 


124 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“ fishers of men ” and as nothing else, and, hav- 
ing failed to land a husband, they are without re- 
sources. When she came the other day and 
poured her woes into my ears, she said “she 
thought she would like to be a secretary, or a hos- 
pital nurse, or to go on the stage! ” 

From her point of view, none of these busi- 
nesses required any training, or if they did, she 
was too lazy to undertake it. The child has abso- 
lutely nowhere to go, as she is the only pretty 
one of the family, and Mrs. Carter won’t have her 
in the house for a moment with her youthful step- 
father. 

I daresay she is quite right. 

Eileen implored me to help her. 

“You are so clever and so beautiful, ‘Iris,’ 
and so rich and happy too now! It is so hard for 
people like me, who are not a bit clever, to face 
the world. If you could just take me in for a day 
or two, I could be trying to get a situation as 
something somewhere. You are always so kind 
and helpful to girls who have to work, and you 
are my only friend in the world.” 

I spoke to Niel about it, but I found she had 
tackled him already and had easily got the right 
side of him. 


125 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Story. 

“We are quite sufficient for each other, dar- 
ling,” he said; “but this poor girl loves you so 
dearly, and is so domesticated in her tastes, that I 
thought she would take some of the trouble of 
housekeeping, which I know you don’t like, off 
your hands.” 

Eileen domesticated ! 

I don’t suppose she was ever in the kitchen in 
her life, except to steal goodies from the cook; 
and her gloves and stockings are better supplied 
with holes than those of any girl I have ever 
known. 

“Of course she can stay with us for a few 
days if you wish,” I said. “ And I will try to get 
her some situation.” 

“ Let us keep her as long as we can with us,” 
he said. “It is terrible to think of that fragile 
child facing the world, and I am sure you are too 
tender and sympathetic not to wish to shield her 
from its rough usage.” 

Of course I saw by this that Niel had been 
got at; but I don’t dislike Eileen, and she can no 
more help making love to every man she sees than 
she can help breathing. Her little artless — artful, 
kittenish ways amuse one, and her appearance is 
decorative and pleasant to look at in a room. I 


126 


The Sentimental Sex. 


dare say if I had married Drogo Warrington I 
shouldn’t have cared to have her about, but with 
Niel it is different. He never looks at any woman 
but me, and I think even Eileen would have a 
hard task to induce him to make love to her. 

It is curious, though, to note how differently 
Niel and I look on my marriage with him. He 
seems to consider it the only event of importance 
in my life, that one towards w r hich every previous 
incident was tending. To me it means compara- 
tively little. The compulsory companionship of a 
stranger, who not only does not understand me, 
but does not even try to do so, who frowns down 
any spontaneous expression of opinion on my part, 
and resents any characteristic in me which does 
not accord with his own hard and fast rules of 
what his wife’s nature should be — this is difficult 
to endure, but with the exercise of a good deal of 
patience and diplomacy it can be borne. 

So much for the intellectual side of it. As to 
the other — to which men attach so much impor- 
tance — it means little more to me than what de 
Musset styles : 

“ . . . d’un etre inconnu le contact passager . . . ” 

Having stifled my first strong instinctive aver- 
sion against Niel, I am all that is gentle and duti- 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Story. 127 

ful. I have entered into a compact and I mean to 
carry it through in perfect loyalty. 

He on his side is passionately in love with me, 
and having hardly drawn at all upon his resources 
of sentiment and emotion, there is a savage sim- 
plicity about his love, his hate, and his jealousy, 
which is in marked contrast with our latest mod- 
ern half-tones of feeling. 

Personally, I prefer the half-tones. 

Witty and skilful verbal love-making interests, 
and even excites me, — especially if the love-maker 
is blond and grey-eyed and married. But down- 
right black and white passion jars upon and tires 
when it does not frighten me. 

I am a physical coward, and more or less of a 
moral one. Brain and nerves have been over- 
taxed for sixteen years. I want liberty and quiet, 
and just enough excitement and amusement to 
keep me from rusting. Above all things, I hate 
“a scene,” and Niel positively revels in scenes. 

I took him to Sir Edward Colborn’s three nights 
ago, and I am sorry to say I shall never be able to 
go there again. It was always interesting: the 
latest red-hot celebrity mobbed and exploited, 
while last season’s celebrities glared at them from 
neglected corners. I contrived to lose Niel as soon 


128 


The Sentimental Sex. 


as I got in, and started a cosy tete-a-tete in the 
conservatory with Kenneth Warburton the painter. 
He is quite rich now, owing to his picture of 
“Potiphar’s Wife” having been voted indecent by 
the London press, and shown round the provinces 
in a darkened room with a trick light. He was 
lucky enough to get preached against in some of 
the northern towns, and he is now inundated with 
orders from picture-dealers for Scriptural ladies 
with pasts. 

The stories he told me about some of his 
models were really killingly funny, and I was con- 
gratulating myself that Niel wasn’t there to hear 
them when I saw him bearing down upon us 
through the conservatory door, with a face as 
black as thunder. 

“Come home at once! ” he said to me in that 
booming voice of his which nobody can help hear- 
ing: “My wife shall not stay in the place to be 
insulted by her hostess.” 

And after all it turned out that it was only old 
Lady Colborn (whom nobody minds) in one of 
her eccentric fits, saying, when Niel asked who 
somebody was, that she was “ not responsible for 
the riff-raff her husband invited to the house ! ” 

I explained to him that she was often much 


129 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Story. 

ruder than that, and that only last month she told 
the Chinese Ambassador that he was “a silly little 
man, and that it was quite time he went home to 
bed”; but he wouldn’t listen, and I was marched 
out on his arm. 

Life is still in its primitive, tragic state for Niel; 
he hasn’t a laugh in his nature. My comedy 
powers are wasted upon him: Eileen’s tearful 
sentimentality would have suited him a great deal 
better. 

She has already started on the sympathetic 
tack. 

Yesterday I surprised her in the library copying 
the daguerrotype of Niel’s mother on a large scale 
in chalks. She draws very badly, and I corrected 
the outlines for her here and there. 

But the artfulness of the manoeuvre filled me 
with wonder and admiration. 

If she would do so much for a married man, 
what wouldn’t she do for a single one ? 

Niel says she has a beautiful soul. 

I shouldn’t like to be hard on the girl. She is 
of the type called “tender, clinging, and woman- 
ly.” But as I don’t want her to set a bad example 
to the servants, I really think she will have to go. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


MR. VANSITTART’S VERSION. 

Poor little Eileen Carter is a tender, innocent, 
childlike creature. 

She is very happy with us. Especially with 
me, she says. “Iris” frightens her sometimes, 
she tells me. I explained to her that that was be- 
cause “ Iris ” is a poetess and a genius. She said 
“Yes,” and wasn’t it wonderful that “Iris” 
should have written all those beautiful verses to 
Drogo Warrington, who ran away with Mrs. 
Western a few months ago ? 

Then she began to quote from “Rainbow 
Lights ” : 

“ We have met and parted coldly, we have said a cold good- 
bye, 

All the loving and the laughter have forgotten you and 1 ; 

I have sought in tepid friendship all the solace it can give; 

As a flow’r bereft of sunshine, without love I cannot live ! ” 

“ Now, if she had written like that about you,” 
Eileen said to me, “I could have understood. But 


130 


Mr. Vansittart’s Version. 


131 

when I saw Mr. Warrington, I could hardly be- 
lieve it possible that ‘ Iris ’ could ever have cared 
for him.” 

“Are you really sure he is the man she used 
to care for ?” I asked. 

But even while I spoke I remembered how 
pale “ Iris ” had grown when she heard the name 
of the scoundrel who had run away with Mrs. 
Western, and how much upset she seemed about 
it afterwards. 

“Oh, yes, I am quite sure,” Eileen replied. 
“Of course I was a tiny little child at the time, 
for I am twelve years younger than 4 Iris.’ But 
mamma has often told us about it. Poor darling 
4 Iris ’ was going to marry him ; and at the last 
minute his wife walked into the church and 
stopped the ceremony. 4 Iris ’ was very ill after- 
wards. If I had been she, and had been parted like 
that from a man I loved, as I could love, I think I 
should have died.” 

“ Why, you are too young to understand such 
things,” I was beginning, when she cut me short. 

“Iam not too young to love,” she said softly; 
“ but I shall never, never marry the man / love! ” 

And with that, before I could say another 
word, she ran from the room in a flood of tears. 


1)2 


The Sentimental Sex. 


I was sorry for the child if she had some un- 
happy love affair on her mind, but I couldn’t think 
of her very much just then. One thought stuck 
in my mind : that the man to whom my wife had 
written all those passionate lines was alive, that he 
had eloped with a woman in a set. among whom 
my wife had once visited, and that some day she 
might meet him again. 

The thought excited in me a feeling of worry, 
excitement, and insecurity, which surprised me. 

Of course, I know my wife loves me — if I 
were not sure of that I should be the most miser- 
able man in England; but sometimes, only some- 
times, she seems a little cold and strange in her 
manner to me, almost as if her thoughts were 
elsewhere. 

A wife should have no secrets from her hus- 
band; his image should dominate her heart and 
soul. Up to now I have never felt actually jealous. 
She never talks about her first husband (from mo- 
tives of delicacy, no doubt) and there is some- 
thing so dainty and virginal about her that I often 
find myself forgetting that she ever had one. 
There isn’t the slightest doubt that it was the 
most unsuitable marriage possible. There is no 
portrait of this Lambert fellow about the place, 


Mr. Vansittart’s Version. 


'33 


but I know she only married for a home, poor 
lonely darling; and what could there be in com- 
mon between a City man of nearly fifty who went 
to sleep after dinner and died of apoplexy, and a 
little fairy like mine P 

But this Warrington is different, and I can’t 
help wondering when she has those long silent 
fits whether “ Iris ” is ever thinking about him. 


CHAPTER XV. 

MRS. VANSITTART’S VERSION. 

To-day has been one of storm and stress. 

It all arose out of nothing, as these domestic 
hurricanes usually do. But for the past six weeks, 
ever since I made the mistake of allowing Eileen 
Carter to stay here, Niel’s temper has been daily 
growing more difficult. 

He has developed a preposterous jealousy on 
the subject of my past experiences, and is per- 
petually cross-questioning me about the two men 
to whom I was successively engaged to be 
married. 

As I have not seen either of them for at least 
six years, and have been married twice in the 
interim, Niel’s jealousy on their account would 
appear downright comical were he not in such 
terrible earnest. 

Frankly, I am beginning to be very much afraid 
of him. He is so overwhelmingly big, and has 

134 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 


•35 


such horribly large, thick-veined hands. On more 
than one occasion lately 1 have awakened at night 
in a state of trembling terror from a dream in 
which he was driving his fingers into my throat! 

Two days ago, he chose to make a scene over 
a miniature of Drogo Warrington which he routed 
out from the back of a cabinet in the drawing- 
room. Drogo had had it painted for me ten years 
ago, and I had really fofgotten its existence when 
Niel brought it to me while Read was brushing 
my hair in the morning. 

Most unluckily, it had: “To my darling 
Isabel ” inscribed on the back, and Niel showed 
me this inscription, holding it close up under my 
eyes. 

He was positively shaking with anger. 

“What does this mean ? ” he asked. 

I was tired of these silly scenes, and especially 
vexed that he should behave in such a fashion 
before the servants. 

“Isabel is my name, you know,” I answered 
sweetly. “I did not adopt the nom de plume of 
‘ Iris ’ until six or seven years ago.” 

“ Who is this man, pray ?” 

“His name is written underneath,” I said, 
pointing it out to him, “Drogo Warrington.” 


136 The Sentimental Sex. 

“And what do you think of this fellow, 
now ? ” 

“I think,” I said, after carefully studying the 
portrait, “that he is really wonderfully good-look- 
ing. Don’t you ? ” 

It is always a mistake to try flippancy with 
poor Niel. He went straight up to the fireplace 
and smashed the miniature to pieces with the 
poker and his heel in the fender. 

“The idea of your keeping the fellow’s picture 
is disgraceful,” he shouted. 

“ Read,” I said, “you can go away and come 
back to finish my hair when I ring.” 

And much against her will, Read was obliged 
to go just as things promised to get* lively. 

After she had left the room Niel worked him- 
self up to a state of righteous indignation over the 
offending portrait, the original of which was, he 
declared, a “villain who had wrecked the happi- 
ness of an entire family and ruined a trusting 
woman,” and who was at the present moment 
“ living in sin.” 

(I do hate that last expression — there is such a 
shoppy, Dissenting flavour about it.) 

I shied at the “trusting woman.” 

“ People don’t get led astray at forty,” I ob- 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 


•37 

jected, “and Mrs. Western is quite that, fully two 
years older than Drogo.” 

“I wonder you can demean yourself by tak- 
ing the part of such a scoundrel! ” 

“ I don’t take his part. I didn’t even interfere 
to prevent you from jumping upon his portrait.” 

“ Why did you keep it ? ” 

“Oh, my dear Niel, I had forgotten all about 
it. Besides, it was really a work of art, worth 
keeping for its own sake. His letters and por- 
traits I burned a long time ago.” 

“How could you ever have loved such a 
man ? ” 

“ How can you ask me such a question ? We 
are not responsible for our feelings, and that fall- 
ing in love is the result of animal magnetism, and 
in no way depends upon the merit of its object.” 

“Do you really believe such a horrible doc- 
trine ? Do you mean to tell me that you could 
love a man, knowing him to be vile and debased 
and wicked ? ” 

“Not now," I replied, fori was dead tired of 
the subject, and longed to quiet him and get rid 
of him; “but when I was very young and very 
silly I might have done so.” 

It ended by Niel being very penitent for having 


138 The Sentimental Sex. 

teased me, and very demonstrative in his affec- 
tion : which trials I endured with becoming meek- 
ness. But that same afternoon, he suggested to 
me in all seriousness, that as we had been now 
married five months, it was quite time that I com- 
posed another “Rainbow Lights” volume all 
about my love for him. 

“Love ennobled by the holy sacrament of 
marriage,” he explained. “The only love worth 
having.” 

I had to swallow down an irreverent desire to 
break into Book of Nonsense rhymes on the spot. 
Fancy my writing “to order” about my feelings 
for Mr. Vansittart ! 

“ I once had a husband named Niel, 

Who talked of his soul a good deal. ,, 

Or, 

“ I had a little husband: his height was six feet four, 

He talked about his feelings till he became a bore.” 

That night he took me to task for not being 
affectionate enough to “poor little Eileen.” 

“The child adores you,” he said, “and she is 
exceedingly sensitive. In the drawing-room this 
evening, you spoke to her so' coldly that you hurt 
her .terribly. Didn’t you notice how she slipped 
out of the room ? ” 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 


139 


“Yes: and I noticed how you slipped out of 
the room after her. Don’t be angry, Niel; I am 
sure you were actuated by the best motives in the 
world, and I know exactly what happened when 
you found her.” 

“You know !” 

“ Perfectly. You went to the study: the door 
was ajar, you heard the sound of sobbing, you 
peeped in, and saw Eileen before the table, her 
head buried in her hands ” 

“ At the desk, not at the table.” 

“ Ah, that’s a detail ! Anyhow, she appeared to 
be weeping bitterly. You spoke her name: ‘Tell 
me, my poor child, ’ you said, ‘ what is the matter ? ’ 
She appeared much startled and surprised at seeing 
you, and at first hesitated to confide in you. At 
last it came out bit by bit. ‘ Iris ’ was so unkind 
to her. She could not bear it. She loved ‘ Iris ’ 
so much, etc., etc. Presently she left off crying on 
the table and took to crying on your shoulder.” 

“ Indeed she did not! It is true that as I was 
standing behind her chair, I put my arm along the 
back of it ” 

“And she rested her head against it? It 
comes to the same thing in the end, and as you 
left the door open ” 

10 


140 The Sentimental Sex. 


“Did I?” 

“ Men always do on these occasions. I should 
have heard the whole story, with embellishments, 
from Read. Servants are very strict moral cen- 
sors, and invariably resent any ‘ carryings on ’ 
under their own roof in which they themselves 
are not concerned.’* 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by all 
this. I can’t imagine how you found out exactly 
what happened this evening ” 

“I will tell you. As I sat in the drawing- 
room, I knew what was happening in the study 
because I understand a little of human nature.” 

“You don’t understand my nature,” he burst 
out angrily, “ if you suppose that I regard that 
poor homeless little girl in any other light than as a 
sister. I wonder you can lower yourself by think- 
ing such things of me. It’s that hateful scandal- 
mongering set you used to live in that have put 
such ideas into your mind. You ought to know 
me better than to insult me by such suspicions.” 

“MydearNiel, I don't suspect you. On the 
contrary, I trust you thoroughly. I don’t even 
suppose you kissed her.” 

By the way he reddened, I could see I had been 
too charitable. I suppose it was excusable under 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 141 

the circumstances. But no man kisses a girl of 
Eileen’s temperament only once , if the girl has any 
say in the matter. 

I was surprised to find that I was sorry, really 
sorry. Of course a kiss isn’t very much, but I 
had had an idea that Niel was above that sort of 
thing, and took all such matters more seriously. 

Odd that at my age, and after my experiences, 

I should still cherish illusions on the subject of 
men! But I did. 

Next day I drove with Eileen to see old Mrs. 
Middleton. She wants a secretary and compan- 
ion, and I am fully resolved on getting rid of the 
girl. Mrs. Middleton is very religious, and has 
tame curates to afternoon tea, so that Eileen will 
not lack new objects of devotion. 

She opened that little rabbit mouth of hers on 
the way home, and bleated out that she was afraid 
she shouldn’t be “very happy with Mrs. Middle- 
ton.” 

“One cannot expect always to be ‘ very happy ’ 
whilst earning one’s living,” I said. “But doing 
one’s duty in an honourable and self-respecting 
way yields some satisfaction.” 

“Ah, I wish I were clever, and hard, and firm 
like you!” she sighed in the most innocent way 


142 


The Sentimental Sex. 


possible; but I caught a very unpleasant gleam in 
those dark-green eyes of hers. 

She was dressed for dinner before I left the 
drawing-room to change my gown. Of course, 

I knew that she had done this with the idea of 
waylaying Niel, but as I have never been able to 
fight my sex with their own weapons, I did not 
come down until the second bell rang. 

At dinner I found Eileen red-eyed and resigned, 
Niel flushed and perturbed. Turning on tears in 
order to win a man to one’s own way of thinking, 
has always seemed a cowardly trick; but women 
of the Eileen type, kittenish, caressing, little souls, 
are usually proficient in the art. We were going 
to the theatre that night — Niel permits the Lyceum 
and the Adelphi; but he has an equal horror of 
burlesque, and of Ibsen, legs and problems being 
both tabooed by him as dramatic attractions — and 
Eileen pleaded a headache, so we endured a most 
unpleasant tete-a-tete, during the course of which 
Niel actually accused me of “driving poor little 
Eileen from the shelter of our roof by my wicked, 
causeless jealousy.” 

I bit my lips to keep them shut, but at last I 
could stand it no longer. 

“Jealous!” I cried. “Jealous because I am 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 143 

sending away a girl who makes love to every man 
she sees, simply because I don’t want her to be 
laughed at by my servants. Why, if I were really 
jealous it is I and not she who would go." 

“Has it come to this?" he exclaimed in ac- 
cents of the deepest reproach. “ We haven’t been 
married five months, and already you threaten to 
leave me! " 

“Pray, don’t be so tragic, Niel dear. I don’t 
threaten anything of the sort. I simply say that if 
it were you making love to Eileen, instead of 
Eileen making love to you, I shouldn’t be so self- 
ish as to want to keep you to myself, or so greedy 
as to expect to share you with another lady. I 
should simply go." 

“And is that the light value you set upon the 
marriage service ? Is that what you meant by 
swearing at the altar to love, honour, and obey 
me, until death do us part?" 

“Or until one or the other of us broke the 
bargain." 

“There is no talk of bargains in the marriage 
service." 

“No, nor of the Divorce Court either. Yet 
both play a very important part in manage a la 
mode” 


144 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“ It’s horrible to hear you talk in this way,” he 
exclaimed, “as though there were no such thing 
as faithful love, and loyalty, and truth, and honour, 
and as if a man could not befriend an innocent girl 
without being false to his wife.” 

“Iam afraid the world has made me a little 
unbelieving,” I said; “and, under the circum- 
stances, perhaps it is as well that Eileen’s child-like 
innocence and candour will not be much longer 
exposed to the withering touch of my scepticism. 
She goes to Mrs. Middleton in a week from to- 
day.” 

At this he became extremely angry, and sulked 
for the rest of the drive. I had shown that I did 
not trust him, he said, and he regarded that in the 
light of a cruel insult. At the theatre he would 
hardly speak a word, but glared over my shoulder 
from the back of the box, growing positively fu- 
rious when an opera-glass was pointed in my 
direction. 

And halfway through the evening Drogo War- 
rington walked into the stalls ! 

Niel knew him instantly from the miniature. 
He was “spoiling for a fight,” and he rose to the 
occasion. 

Did I see that evil-looking brute in the stalls ? 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 145 

He wondered the fellow dared to show his face 
among decent people. Just the coarse-featured 
scoundrel he had expected. 

/ thought Drogo was looking rather sweet. 
He has one of those clear, fair, English complex- 
ions that look so nice over the black and white of 
evening dress, and he always wears such beauti- 
fully-cut clothes — however much Niel pays for his 
they always look as though he had hired them for 
the evening. 

Did I see him staring at me ? What con- 
founded insolence! How dared he look at me? 
Had he no sense of shame or decency ? 

“ Really, Niel,” I said at last, as he went on 
grumbling and muttering in my ear, and glower- 
ing down at the stalls in such a cut-throat fashion 
that it looked as if I was enjoying an evening out 
with a lunatic, “ I can’t prevent people from look- 
ing at me in a public place. It isn’t as if he had 
come up and spoken to me.” 

My would-be conciliatory remark was but fuel 
to the fire. The mere notion that a man branded 
with the unspeakable crime of eloping with a 
middle-aged married woman should venture to 
address me moved my husband to such wrath 
that he jumped up in the box and insisted 


146 The Sentimental Sex. 

upon my accompanying him home then and 
there. 

Needless to say, I trotted quietly after him. 
But these repeated scenes are, to say the least of 
it, excessively bourgeois , and they cease to be 
funny when one has nobody with whom one can 
laugh at them. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


mrs. vansittart’s story — continued. 

tl Ou suis-je ? Qu’ai-je fait ? Que dois-je faire encore ? ” 

This line, from some pseudo-classic pomposity 
I used to recite at school, is ringing through my 
head to-day, and expresses my exact state of mind 
for the moment. 

A crisis has arrived in the house of Vansittart, 
and things can never be the same again. 

Even now I can hardly realise how it has come 
about. 

I will recall to-day’s happenings by stages. 

Seven-thirty . — Niel wakes me up to “nag” at 
me. Accuses me of crying last night when I had 
to leave the theatre, because I wanted to look at 
my old sweetheart. I answer that if I cried at all 
it was because I was tired and hated these silly 
scenes about nothing. The word “ nothing ” sets 
him off. Nothing! Is married love and trust and 
happiness nothing ? Is the honour of the domes- 

147 


148 The Sentimental Sex. 

tic hearth nothing? etc., etc. (It sounds dread- 
fully like an Adelphi hero taking the centre of the 
stage, and I long to punctuate his discourse with 
“’ear, ’ear,” “brayvo,” and “ankoar”!) In the 
middle of it I go to sleep. 

Eight . — I wake up suddenly and hear my hus- 
band uttering a big, big D in the next room. 

He has cut himself while shaving. I consider it a 
judgment, and go to sleep with a happy smile. I 
don’t mean to come down to breakfast. I always 
dodge that absurd eight o’clock breakfast down- 
stairs, and those preposterous prayers that Niel 
always will read aloud because his mother used 
to. Imagine a man with nothing to do for his 
living breakfasting heavily at eight, and reading 
prayers first. 

I shall have my cafe au lait in bed, and read 
Gyp’s latest piece of pretty nonsense. That artful 
little hussy, Eileen, can have Niel all to herself for 
breakfast. I can’t enter into competition with 
people of that sort. 

Ten . — I have my bath and dress. Read brushes 
my hair and hums and ha’s. She is evidently dy- 
ing to tell me something. * 

At last I put down my book and ask her what 
she wants to say. 


149 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Story. 

She grows red, apologises a good deal, throws 
out dark hints about “goings on unbeknown to 
me,” “base ingratitude,” etc. At last it all comes 
out. Jane was passing the study door “quite by 
accident ” the day before yesterday. Miss Carter 
was inside with “the master”; Miss Carter was 
crying, and presently she “stuck up her face and 
kissed him ! ” 

I stifle a desperate inclination to laugh, and ob- 
serve gravely : 

“ Miss Carter is a very affectionate girl.” 

Read is rather taken aback at this. 

“Of course, ma’am, if you don’t mind — but 
Jane, being a young thing, gets easily shocked 
like. I told her it was no business of hers, nor yet 
again this morning, when you wasn’t at breakfast, 
and Miss Carter kissed Mr. Vansittart’s hand as 
it lay on the breakfast table — as I was saying, 
ma’am, when Jane came and told me, I said she 
must have made a mistake, and that no young 
lady could do no such thing.” 

“You were quite right, Read. It is most un- 
likely.” 

For all that I don’t like it a bit. 

Eleven . — I feel thoroughly disgusted, and don’t 
want to meet either Eileen or Niel. So I slip 


150 


The Sentimental Sex. 


quietly out with the dogs and give them a run in 
the park. It’s the first time I have been for a walk 
without an escort for at least six months, and I 
enjoy it amazingly. I have on a charming morn- 
ing walking-gown of silvery-grey foulard, and a 
delicious little toque, and as I catch a few admir- 
ing glances from male passers-by, I feel inclined to 
make eyes at one and all of them from sheer mis- 
chief and delight in my own society. 

One . — Niel opens the door to me and turns 
white with anger when I confess that I have been 
out by myself, and have had an early lunch at a 
restaurant in Oxford Street, and have taken a han- 
som home. He considers such conduct “fast and 
unfeminine.” I answer that for five months I have 
been striving to live up to his ideals of femininity, 
but that I have now given it up in despair. He 
bottles up his indignation as he wants to ask a 
favour. Without the least tact he blurts it out. 

“ Poor little Eileen is breaking her heart about 
leaving us. She has never been so happy in her 
life as she has been with us. She will cry herself 
ill if she is not allowed to stay. And she is such 
a nice companion for you.” 

“For you, you mean,” I retorted. “No, Niel. 
It is too one-sided an arrangement if I may not 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Story. 15 1 

even go for a walk by myself in the morning, or 
be looked at by a man in a theatre, and you may 
spend your time philandering with a girl who 
lives in the house, kissing her in the library, 
and letting her kiss your hand at the breakfast- 
table.” 

“Have you actually condescended to set the 
servants to spy upon me ? ” 

“No, I have not! Servants don’t require any 
* setting.’ I don’t want to injure the girl’s name, 
and if she hasn’t the good taste to leave at once, 
she can stay for the rest of the week. But if she is 
caught kissing you again she shall go on the spot, 
and i fyou are seen kissing her, I shall go.” 

“And it is you who says this to me, you, my 
‘Iris,’ my ideal of purity and nobility of mind. 
You can entertain these vulgar and sordid suspi- 
cions after writing so beautifully about unchang- 
ing love and high-souled friendship, you can 
lower yourself to cruel jealousy of a poor friend- 
less girl ! ” 

“What I may have written has nothing to do 
with the case. You might have published reams 
about honest love and simple faith, but for all that 
you would not care to find me kissing another 
man.” 


152 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“How dare you suggest such a thing? I 
would shoot the man or myself.” 

“See how much more charitable I am. I 
don’t want to shoot either you or Eileen.” 

“The laws which govern the conduct of men 
and women are very different.” 

“That is probably why I don’t want to shoot 
you. Don’t let’s waste time in argument, Niel. 
What I have to say once and for all is just this: so 
long as I have to live with you as your wife, so 
long I shall expect you, under your own roof at 
least, not to make love to any woman but me.” 

“So long as you have to live with me! ” 

He grew very pale as he repeated the words, 
and looked at me fixedly for a few seconds. 
Then, before I could speak again, he dashed from 
the room into the hall, and I heard the front 
door slam to behind him. 

I let Eileen have lunch by herself, while I went 
upstairs to take my hat and gloves off. My head 
ached, and 1 felt worried and excited. The atmos- 
phere of the house seemed charged with elec- 
tricity, and “rows and rumours of rows” were in 
the air. 

I was sorry I had let slip that speech about 
“ having to" live with him. I know men hate 


*53 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Story. 

to think that women are anything but jubilant at 
being taken notice of by them, especially primitive 
men of the Niel type. Of course it would be easy 
enough to make him believe I adored him again, 
even without having recourse to absolute false- 
hood. It is indeed difficult to persuade a man 
that you don't adore him. Still I was sorry. I 
didn’t like that hurt look on his* face, the sort of 
dumb reproach one sees in the eyes of a big dog 
unjustly punished. 

I went down to the drawing-room and tried 
to play. The piano is in the inner room, divided 
by an archway hung with oriental silk draperies 
from the larger room to which it stands at right 
angles. We have had the two rooms knocked 
into one, and to anyone seated at the piano it is 
not easy to hear sounds in the larger apartment. 

I had fallen into a reverie upon the unsatisfac- 
tory nature of the marriage tie as I played over 
some music I knew by heart. I never heard any- 
one come in, I never heard any announcement. 
Absolutely the first words that fell on my ears 
were: 

“ May I speak to you, Isabel ? ” 

And the speaker was Drogo Warrington ! 


CHAPTER XVII. 

mrs. vansittart’s version — continued . 

To say that I was astonished is to put it 
mildly : I was absolutely stupefied with astonish- 
ment. 

How and why in the world had Drogc come, 
and what in the world had he come for ? 

Anyhow, there he was, as large as life and 
rather larger than he used to be, standing sheep- 
ishly, with his hat in his hand, in the middle of 
my drawing-room — Niel’s drawing-room ! 

As I stared at him he put his hand to his 
moustache and pulled it quickly — a little trick he 
had when he was nervous or thoughtful (he 
wasn’t often either). 

That absurd little trick, remaining unchanged 
while everything else had altered with us, took 
my mind back with a rush to my old struggling 
days in London lodgings, when I used to be so 
fond of him. In spite of myself, my mouth broad- 
154 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 


155 


ened into a smile, and a ridiculous pet name 
which Euan and I used to call him slipped out 
before I could stop it. 

“ Hullo, Doddy ! ” 

Of course it was undignified of me, but for the 
moment I forgot all about our husbands and wives 
(or rather my husband and his wives), and thought 
only of “ Doddy Warrington ” of the old days. 

Naturally, he was encouraged. He put his 
hat down and seized my two hands in his, hold- 
ing them hard while he looked down into my 
face. 

“You haven’t changed a bit! ” he said almost 
in a whisper. 

But he had. 

* 

I could see it when his face was so near mine 
and the light fell on it. At a distance he was 
nearly as handsome as ever, although his curly 
yellow hair was growing very thin on the top, 
and his waist was many inches thicker than it 
used to be. But the look in his eyes, and the 
eyes themselves, had changed. They used to 
dance with fun like a schoolboy’s, and to melt 
with tenderness as only blue eyes can. But their 
dancing and melting days were over. They were 

bloodshot, and the skin underneath was puffy and 
11 


156 The Sentimental Sex. 

closely intersected with lines. He looked like a 
man with whom a woman wouldn’t care to be 
shut in on a long railway journey — and that is a 
look I hate. 

“You are just the same, Isabel!'” he mur- 
mured, and bent his head close to mine. 

1 freed my hands from his pretty sharply. 

“ What were you going to do ?” I asked, try- 
ing to be cold and dignified. 

“I was going to kiss you if you would let 
me,” he answered very humbly. “Won’t you, 
for the sake of old times ? ” 

“Upon my word, Mr. Warrington,” I said, 
“your assurance amazes me! You force your 
way, uninvited, into my house ” 

“ I didn’t. I rang the bell and asked if you 
were in.” 

“If you' had had the common politeness to 
send in your name, I should certainly have been 
‘ not at home ’ to you.” 

“That’s why I made the servant swear she 
wouldn’t announce me. The fact was, Isabel, I 
couldn’t keep away. When I saw you last night 
at the theatre, looking as lovely as ever, but dread- 
fully pale and sad, and that fellow with you, and 
heard what everybody said ” 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 


'57 


“ What does everybody say ?” 

“That you’re married to a bushranger who 
beats you. It’s no good looking angry. You 
asked me, and I had to tell you. I didn’t believe 
it at first, but when I saw his face last night, and 
the way he clutched you by the arm and dragged 
you away from the theatre, it was all I could do 
not to follow him and fight him. I wish to 
Heaven we lived in France: I’d do it.” 

“ My dear Doddy, it’s a good thing for you we 
don’t. He is twice your size, and he’d kill you 
like a fly with a thump. And really, don’t you 
think you have sufficient domestic complications 
of your own without interfering in other peo- 
ple’s ?” 

That was an unkind cut, I know. But I 
wanted to be unkind to him. It was most out- 
rageous of him to call like this: I should never 
hear the last of it from Niel. But now that he 
was here, standing quite close to me, in spite 
of the puffiness under his eyes and that look I 
didn’t like in them, in spite of the years we had 
been parted, and the trouble and wretchedness he 
had once caused me, in spite of my husband, and 
his wife, and Maud Western, I could not help feel- 
ing a sort of familiar affectionateness towards him. 


158 The Sentimental Sex. 


I had loved him quite unreasonably much, and I 
had never got tired of him or married him; conse- 
quently, I had never grown disillusioned on his 
account 

He winced under my words. 

“You always had a spiteful tongue,” he said, 
“but you can’t keep it up with me. And you 
wouldn’t sneer at me if you knew how jolly mis- 
erable I am.” 

“Well, whose fault is that ? ” 

“Yours.” 

“Mine!” 

“Yes.” (Coming a little nearer to me.) “On 
my soul, Isabel, you are the only woman I have 
ever really loved. I don’t pretend you are the 
only one I have ever made love to ” 

“You couldn’t very well, as things stand, 
could you ?” 

“I don’t mean to try. But if I’ve gone to 
pieces and got thoroughly reckless, it’s your 
fault.” 

“Is it my fault that you ran away with Mrs. 
Western ?” 

“ It’s your fault if I didn’t care who I ran away 
with. By the time you threw me over you had 
made me dissatisfied with all other women. Look 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 


159 


what a muddle you and I have made of our lives. 
Do you dare to tell me you are happy ? Can you 
look at me and suppose I’m happy? And noth- 
ing stood in the way of your being my wife all 
these years but your pride.” 

“ And your wife.” 

“She would have divorced me — she is going 
to divorce me now.” 

“ And you will marry Maud Western ? ” 

“God help me! What else in honour can I 
do ? Yet I’d as soon cut my throat.” 

He was speaking the truth. I could see it. 
A horrid feeling of helplessness and failure came 
upon me. Those principles to which I had clung 
so steadfastly, for which I had suffered so much, 
seemed to me, for the moment, but selfish pride. 
Drogo and I had both deteriorated since we 
parted: both had hardened, he in the man’s, I in 
the woman’s way. Each would become worse in 
the future. It was all my fault, I suppose. And 
yet, were the time to come again, I should act in 
the same way. 

“Iam sorry,” I said, “ very, very sorry. But 
you mustn’t try to associate me too much with any 
failure or muddle you may have made. We have 
been living our own lives apart for eight or nine 


160 The Sentimental Sex. 

years now, and — well, we have lived them ! 
Just because you see me looking pretty in a thea- 
tre, and hear some quite unfounded gossip about 
me — and perhaps, too, because you have just had 
a tiff with your latest inamorata — you are pleased 
to break into sentiment about me, and to talk 
about ‘ might have beens.’ But it wouldn’t have 
been. Had I eloped with you and married you, 
you would have been by this time bewailing my 
coldness to Maud Western, and Niel Vansittart 
would have been telling me I was thrown away 
upon a husband who didn’t understand me.” 

He laughed. 

“ Should we, do you think ?” he said. “ Well, 
you generally know best. But I don’t think for 
my part I could ever have got tired of a woman 
who could always make me laugh.” 

“My qualifications as a Merry Andrew would 
have charmed you even when my physical attrac- 
tions palled ? ” 

“By Jove! No man who loved you once and 
understood you at all could ever get tired of you ! 
Tell me, dear; this man isn’t really unkind to 
you, is he ? It may sound impertinent from me, 
but I couldn’t stand it.” 

“You may make your mind easy on that 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 161 

score, Mr. Warrington. My husband loves me as 
much as even you can wish.” 

“Confound him! You know I didn't mean 
that. And do you love him ? ” 

“May I remind you at this point that you 
didn’t come through a French window? De- 
stroyers of a husband’s peace invariably enter the 
house in his absence that way, on the stage at 
least, and invariably begin with the question you 
have just asked me.” 

“ But you won’t answer it ?” 

“ I can’t quite see how it concerns you.” 

He took up his hat again, 

“I suppose you want to get rid of me?” he 
suggested. 

“Frankly, I do.” 

“ I’m glad I’ve seen and spoken to you, all the 
same,” he said, fixing his eyes upon my face 
while he slowly smoothed his hat. “ I’ve had 
the oddest longing sometimes for the sound of 
your voice, even if it were saying something bit- 
ing. I never minded your tongue because I knew 
you loved me, though you used to pitch into me 
sometimes. Do you remember that night after 
the fireworks at Henley, and how you slanged me 
all the way up to town in the train?” 


1 62 


The Sentimental Sex. 


“You had had too much champagne on the 
house-boat and had flirted outrageously with that 
odious American girl.” 

“ Only to make you jealous, because I was so 
mad about Hartley making an ass of himself about 
you. It was years and years ago, and it seems 
like yesterday. I can even remember that pink 
thing you wore, and how pretty you looked 
in it.” 

“ Pink and cream.” 

“With a lace frill that fell away from your 
neck. Coming back in the hansom we made it 
up, and I kissed your neck above it all the way 

round. Do you remember why, you are 

blushing, Isabel!” 

“ I was vexed at your impertinence.” 

“Still, you remember! You proved you did 
by those verses you published a year or two ago.” 

“I always make capital of anything I may have 
felt.” 

“You talk like that for effect. But a lot of 
your hardness is pretence. You wouldn’t be hard 
with me long if you were my wife.” 

It must have been some trick of memory, 
surely, for of course I did not, could not love this 
man still. But at his voice my heart began sud- 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 163 

denly beating hard as it used to when I was 
twenty, the blood crept up to my cheeks, and an 
enervating softness stole over me from head to 
foot. I didn’t want him to go — I wanted to be 
nearer to him — there we stood within a yard of 
each other, so close that I could detect the pres- 
ence of the very same perfume on his handkerchief 
which he always used to wear, a scent / had 
chosen for him as it was once my favourite — and 
yet we were as far apart as the poles, and should 
be all our lives. 

At the thought, tears sprang to my eyes and 
actually rolled down my cheeks. 

He saw them and had me in his arms in a mo- 
ment, crushing me to him so tightly that I could 
scarcely breathe, and glueing kisses to my cheeks 
and eyelids. I tried to turn my head aside before 
he could kiss my lips, but I felt weak and giddy : 
I could only struggle feebly to thrust his face from 
mine: 

As it was he kissed me, and for the moment I 
was quite sure I loved him. 

“Come with me, Isabel,” he whispered in a 
broken voice. “ It’s not too late.” 

He was very pale, and trembling from head 
to foot. He looked like a desperate man, but 


i 04 The Sentimental Sex. 

it was of myself and not of him that 1 was 
afraid. 

I broke from him with a little laugh which had 
a hysterical ring in it. 

“ It is much too late! ” I said, and as he made 
a movement towards me I sharply rang the bell. 

“The servant will show you out,” I said, 
standing with my back to him. “ Good-bye! ” 

He remained quite still for a moment; then, as 
I did not turn towards him, he came a step nearer 
and softly kissed the back of my neck just above 
the collar of my gown. 

“ Good-bye,” he whispered. 

When I turned my head he was gone. 

I had meant him to go of course. It was the 
only way in which it could have ended. I am 
not of the stuff of which Divorce Court heroines 
are made. 

All this scene had been nothing more than an 
interlude, and would not affect the main story of 
his life or mine. 

When he had left me, I did just what ninety- 
nine women out of a hundred do at the close of 
any exciting interview with a man : I went up to 
the mirror to see how I had looked. 

I was very pale indeed, and tears still stood in 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 165 

my eyes, but I had never looked prettier. This 
meeting and parting with my old sweetheart had 
given me a fresh sensation at any rate, and had 
taught me that my cold little heart could tick a 
little faster on occasion still. 

Up to this moment I had always considered 
myself a miracle of cold propriety, but with the 
close pressure of Drogo’s kisses still burning my 
lips I could hardly justify my Dracoman attitude 
in the matter of Niel and Eileen Carter. 

I made up my mind to be very nice to Niel to 
atone for this afternoon’s “interlude.” After all, 
we had been only married five months — people 
generally take five years to get used to each other, 
and five and twenty to discover that their tempers 
are incompatible. 

That horrid little ache in the region of my heart, 
and the silly tears which came into my eyes when- 
ever I thought about Drogo, undermined my con- 
fidence in myself : a well-regulated person of 
thirty-one does not care to develop unexpected 
emotions. I would encourage Niel to take that 
place in the country after which he so hankered 
and we would let our house in town, for a time 
at least. A pretty place in town wasn’t much use 
if nobody might come and see me in it, and if I 


The Sentimental Sex. 


1 66 

mightn’t stir a step out of it without my husband, 
and if middle-aged and half-forgotten sweethearts 
could burst in at any moment and hug me in my 
own drawing-room. 

I stopped short in my tearful reflections. 

Drogo had left the door open, and there was a 
sound of whispering outside — servants’ audible 
whispering, which if heard above stairs is al- 
ways the stormy petrel’s note, presaging dis- 
aster. 

I grew cold from head to foot with the awful 
thought that they might have seen or heard some- 
thing of that scene with Drogo. But the next 
moment I realised that unless one of them had 
actually entered the room, that was impossible, as 
Drogo and I had conversed in the inner apart- 
ment. 

Yet another horrid suspicion flashed across me: 
this was that the drawing-room door never had 
been shut right through our interview. In that 
case, one of the servants, the ubiquitous Jane (ever 
on the lookout for stolen kisses) or worse still, 
Eileen Carter, might have crept in unheard, 
and 

What were those women outside whispering 
about ? 


Mrs. Vansittart’s Version. 167 

It seemed almost as though they wished to 
attract my attention. 

I walked boldly into the hall and found Read 
and Jane there flushed and shaking with excite- 
ment. 

“Is anything the matter ?” I asked, as coolly 
as I could. 

“Oh, ma’am, nothing! At least, we hope it’s 
nothing, and we didn’t like to tell you ” 

“ To tell me what ?” 

“Some time after that gentleman came, ma’am, 
that Jane let in ” 

“You should not have let him in, Jane.” 

“I couldn’t help it, indeed, ma’am! It was 
not for the sovereign he gave me — I wish I hadn’t 
taken it now ” 

“ Go on, Read.” 

“A few minutes after, ma’am, Mr. Vansittart 
came back, letting himself in with his key.” 

“ Your master came back ? ” 

“Yes, ma’am. Jane happened to be in the 
hall, when Miss Carter she darts out from the 
dining-room and seizes master by the arm. ‘ Don’t 
go in there,’ she says, ‘I beg, I implore you!’ 

‘ What do you mean ? ’ he says, 4 and where is 
“ Iris ” ?’ ‘She’s in there,’ says Miss Carter, ‘and 


The Sentimental Sex. 


168 

she’s got Drogo Warrington with her.’ ‘It’s a 
lie!’ shouts the master. ‘The door’s open: you 
can see for yourself,’ she says, and in he goes.” 

“ Into the drawing-room ?” 

“Yes, ma’am. In a few moments he comes 
out, looking quite wild like, and crams his hat on 
his head, and mutters: ‘ My God, I shall go mad! ’ 
like as if he was dreaming, and walks straight out 
of the front door. Miss Carter she was on the 
watch, and she darts out of the house after him. 
The front door was open and Jane sees them go 
down the street together and get into a hansom. 
A few minutes after, your bell rang, and Jane saw 
the gentleman out as came to see you. Begging 
your pardon, ma’am, but I hope there’s nothing 
wrong ?” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

MR. VANSITTART’S VERSION. 

I have been a fool, a wretched, mad fool, but 
God knows I have suffered! 

Ever since I learned that my wife wrote all 
those verses to that man Warrington, my peace of 
mind has been destroyed. 

I had got to think her coldness towards me 
was only a natural part of the sort of icy purity 
some lofty-natured women have. She had cer- 
tainly told me she had been very much in love 
years ago, but I chose to believe that was only a 
girlish fancy. But when I learned that this Drogo 
Warrington was the man she would have married 
but that the villain had a wife already, and that 
he had tried to entrap her into becoming his mis- 
tress, I grew naturally indignant, remembering 
how unhappy “ Iris ” was when she heard he had 
eloped with a married woman. 

On the top of that, I found a portrait of the 

169 


The Sentimental Sex. 


* 7 ° 

fellow, with his name underneath, kept in a 
jewelled frame, at the back of a cabinet in the 
drawing-room. 

To think that my wife should have kept the 
likeness of such a scoundrel shocked and dis- 
gusted me beyond words. 

The next night at the theatre, as we were 
sitting in a box, I recognised the brute in the 
stalls, ogling up at my wife in a way that made 
me long to wring his neck. 

I lost my temper and made “Iris” leave the 
place with me. 

On the following morning, without saying a 
word to anyone, my wife went off by herself for 
two whole hours. Part of the time I didn’t know 
she was not in the house. I was in the study 
with poor little Eileen Carter, about whom we 
have had a lot of trouble lately. 

I know now what I only half-suspected before, 
that this sweet and tender-natured little girl, who 
has grown up unscathed by all the hardness and 
worldliness around her, loves me very dearly. 
Hers is the most innocent affection possible, poor 
child, but with her trustful, confiding nature, I 
am glad at least she loves a man of honour, able 
to protect her against herself. 


Mr. Vansittart’s Version. 


171 

She told me in the study this morning that she 
should break her heart if she had to leave us. 

“Oh, forgive me, Mr. Vansittart, for loving 
you!” she sobbed. “I love dear ‘Iris’ nearly as 
much, and in time, if you will only let me stay, I 
will school myself to think of you as a dear, kind 
brother. You are so different from all the men I 
have ever met. How can I help loving you ? As 
soon as I met you in ‘ Iris’s ’ rooms, and long 
before she loved you, / did.” 

I remember her mother told me so, but at the 
time I hardly believed her. 

Poor little Eileen ! 

It was no disloyalty to “Iris” which induced 
me to smoothe her hair and comfort her, and per- 
suade her to leave off crying. 

“You must forget this foolish fancy, my 
child,” I said; “lam twelve years older than you, 
to begin with ” 

“But women always love men who are older 
than themselves — that is, until they are as old as 
mamma. Then I think they like them younger. 
If I am sent away, I shall never, never leave off 
thinking of you. But if you will only let me stay, 
in time, as I see how fond you are of ‘Iris,’ and 
how perfectly well suited you are to each other. 


172 


The Sentimental Sex. 


I shall begin to understand how silly I have been, 
and then I shall get cured.” 

I could not be harsh or unkind to the child, 
and I could not help being touched by her 
artless avowal. When my wife returned, after 
expostulating a little with her on her improper 
conduct of going out alone, and lunching at a 
restaurant unattended, I began to speak to her 
about Eileen. 

But she turned upon me with a hard face and 
spoke in tones I had never heard her use before. 
She, my “Iris,” my wife, had actually been let- 
ting the servants spy upon me and misrepresent 
my interviews with Eileen. The girl’s secret at- 
tachment for me was known to her; but, instead 
of speaking of it in terms of tender and womanly 
pity, she employed bitter and sarcastic words, 
and actually drew a parallel between my case and 
her own, and asked what / should do if I were to 
find another man kissing her ! 

As if the conduct of men and women could 
ever for one moment be judged from the same 
standpoint! 

More than that, she threatened to drive Eileen 
from the house if the girl showed me the least 
affection, and declared that she herself would leave 


Mr. Vansittart’s Version. 173 

it if / was ever betrayed into any endearments 
towards her. 

All her wifely obedience, all her ordinary do- 
cility, seemed to have departed from her. She 
stood there facing me in her walking-dress, her 
cheeks flushed and her eyes shining with a kind 
of hard brightness. The look in them was almost 
one of dislike , and her next words cut me to the 
heart. 

“So long as I have to live with you as your 
wife,” she said, “so long I shall expect you, 
under your own roof at least, not to make love to 
any woman but me.” 

The words were terrible enough, coming from 
a wife to a husband who adored her, and they 
signified plainly the hideous gulf of suspicion and 
distrust which had opened between us. But it 
was the look and tone with which they were said 
that made them more terrible still, above all, the 
emphasis on the expression: “so long as I have 
to live with you,” as though the tie were one of 
the law alone, unsanctified by love. 

I staggered under the blow. It was as though 
the words “ She doesn’t love you ! ” had been thun- 
dered into my ear, confirming a horrible, haunting 
suspicion which had lately lurked in my mind. 


'74 


The Sentimental Sex. 


I could not speak to her. She had disobeyed 
my wishes, had taunted me with cruel and unjust 
suspicions, had set up her will in opposition to 
mine, and by her last speech had plainly hinted 
that she did not even love me. 

What could I say to her? I was too much 
hurt to speak. I gave her one long look of deep 
reproach, and left the house. 

I wanted to think, and I can always think best 
in the open air. It was a hot stirless day in July. 
The pavements seemed to burn one’s feet, and the 
paint to be blistering on the houses. Houses, 
houses, everywhere! How I longed at that mo- 
ment to be breathing the fresh wind over the 
plains again! In a flash, as I turned into the 
crowded streets, my thoughts went back to my 
uncle’s farm and the long days of hard, whole- 
some work in the open air, and my mother knit- 
ting by the hearth in the evenings. 

Life seemed so simple out there; one’s daily 
tasks to do, and the heavy sleep of exhaustion at 
night, straightforward days of work and silence— 
a bit of reading in the evenings when there was 
time — I remembered how I used to read “Rain- 
bow Lights ” and picture what the writer was like 
before her portrait appeared — now she was my 


Mr. Vansittart's Version. 175 

wife and I was beginning to think I didn’t even 
understand her. 

It was the people and the houses, for certain. 
A great longing was coming over me to go back 
to the old home I hadn't seen for close on seven 
months now. Once I got “ Iris/’ out there with 
me, she would be herself again, her sweet and ten- 
der self, gentle and womanly, as I would have her 
to be. She had deen drooping lately and growing 
very pale. The country life would bring us into 
sympathy again. Away at the farm there would 
be no Eileen Carter, poor little soul, to rouse my 
wife’s jealousy, and no fashionable London serv- 
ants to spy upon us, and none of these hateful 
artistic and literary people, with their sharp 
tongues and nasty ideas, to influence my wife 
against me. Only the fields and trees and the 
barns and the beasts of the farm. 

With her mind freed from the taint of the 
town, “Iris’s” heart would open out to me like 
a flower, and she would write again more beau- 
tifully than before, and would realise how much 
I loved her, and turn to me for guidance and 
for sympathy. We should never be truly one 
here in London, and I longed to carry her off at 
once, away from its glamour and noise, its streets 


176 The Sentimental Sex. 

and shops and gaudy theatres, its squalor and dirt 
and interminable talk, to the restful silence of the 
plains. 

Things had got into a knot in London, but in 
the country it would be all unravelled and the 
rough made smooth again. 

I turned my steps homeward when I had set- 
tled this in my mind. By this time I had per- 
suaded myself that I ought to overlook my wife’s 
recent conduct on the score of her jealousy of 
Eileen. Thjs jealousy had made me very angry — 
it was so unfounded and insulting. But after all, 
was it not only a proof of her unreasoning love for 
me ? 

Women never can reason; they can only feel. 
Little harmless familiarities which have passed be- 
tween Eileen and me, when misrepresented by 
tattling servants (they should all have a month’s 
wages and go when we shut up the house and 
set sail for Australia) might lead my wife to im- 
agine that she was no longer the only woman in 
the world for me. She had been very pale and 
silent lately: was it possible that she had been 
making herself unhappy with her groundless fears ? 
Women are such tender, fanciful, little things, apt 
to eat their hearts out over imaginary cooling off 


Mr. Vansittart’s Version. 


177 


on the part of the men they love. Love is every- 
thing to them — to men “a thing apart,” to a 
woman “her whole existence.” 

I would go back to my wife now on the in- 
stant. I would take her in my arms, and forgive 
her for her little outbreak of jealous temper, and 
promise her that she should have me all to herself 
in the future. We would be off as soon as possi- 
ble. “Iris” had wanted to go to Scotland in a 
fortnight’s time, but Scotland was not far enough 
away, and the old home seemed to be calling me. 

I had been unkind, even rough in my manner 
towards her. I ought to remember what a fragile 
little thing she is. Very likely she was at this 
moment crying quietly by herself over her cause- 
less jealousy and my imaginary displeasure. 

How pleased she would be to see me back 
again so soon ! 

This thought was in my mind as I put my key 
in the house door. In the hall Eileen rushed out 
to meet me, and stood with outstretched arms, 
waving me back from the drawing-room door. 

“Not in there,, don’t go in there!” she whis- 
pered frantically. “‘Iris’ is there with Drogo 
Warrington ! ” 

I thought the girl had gone mad, and almost 


178 The Sentimental Sex. 

laughed at her. I pushed her on one side and 
went in. 

At first I saw no one. But from the inner 
room a sound fell on my ears which seemed to 
turn my heart to ice. 

It was the sound of a kiss. 

I moved a step forward and saw them as they 
stood on the hearth-rug together. Neither of 
them caught sight of me in the shadow of the cur- 
tains. My wife “ Iris ” was in his arms, gazing 
up in his face with that look of eager, passionate 
love in her eyes which I had so often vainly hoped 
to call there. 

The man was that damned villain Drogo War- 
rington, and my wife loved him ! 


CHAPTER XIX. 

mr. vansittart’s story — continued. 

Why didn’t I kill the man ? 

I’ve asked myself that since. But it was her 
face that stopped me, her face with that look of 
love on it. 

The fellow is a cowardly scoundrel. Years 
ago, he tried to inflict a cruel wrong upon “ Iris ” : 
at this very time he is living in sin with another 
man’s wife. “ Iris ” knows this, and in spite of it 
she could look up into his eyes with that light 
shining in her own! 

“ Love,” she told me the other day, “ is mere 
animal magnetism, and has nothing to do with re- 
spect.” 

I remembered the speech at that moment, as I 
staggered from the drawing-room like a man who 
has been mortally hit. 

I didn’t feel as though I wanted ever to see my 
wife again. I felt indeed that she was my wife 

179 


i8o The Sentimental Sex. 

no longer, or rather that my wife was dead, and 
had never had anything in common with this 
shameless woman who could put her arms round 
such a man as Drogo Warrington and let him kiss 
her lips. 

I had worshipped an idol I took for gold, and I 
had found it clay. I was not angry so much as 
stunned. The happiness I had waited for all my 
life seemed lying about me in ruins. I had left 
poor Nannie Weston, who loved me, I had passed 
her aside as not good enough to be my wife and 
to wear my dear mother’s ring, and I had travelled 
thousands of miles to place my honour and my 
love in the keeping of this woman, who looked 
like a saint and acted like a wanton. 

But no! I would not, I could not, believe it of 
her! My jealous eyes must have deceived me. 
The man must be detaining her against her will — 
1 ought to have struck him down where he stood. 
I must have been mad to slink out and leave them 
like that! 

I stopped in the street under the blazing sun. 
I had left the house and was walking rapidly away 
from it. As I paused, I felt a hand laid on my arm. 

It was Eileen, poor little Eileen, of whom Iris 
had pretended to be jealous. 


Mr. Vansittart's Story. 181 

“ If you kiss Eileen I shall leave the house ! ” 

That is what she had said to me only this 
morning. I burst out laughing at the remem- 
brance. Not very pleasant or mirthful laughter, 

I daresay. Eileen tried to check me. 

“Dear, dear Mr. Vansittart, what are you go- 
ing to do ?” 

“Iam going away,” I answered. “But first 
I am going back to meet that man.” 

“Ah, don’t go back!” she pleaded. “What 
good can it do ? If you killed him, she would 
only hate you. She has always loved him. If 
you go back, she will pretend to be sorry, and she 
may even induce you to forgive her. But he will 
come again when you are out, or she will meet 
him. Don’t go back! ” 

“My God! I can’t live like this. I shall go 
mad! ” 

“Don’t, dear Mr. Vansittart, give way like 
this. You will make me break down too. Shall I 
call this cab, so that we talk till we are calmer ? ” 

“ If you like.” 

In the cab she slipped her hands around my 
arm and fastened them close. Her touch soothed 
me, and when I saw the tears roll down her 
cheeks in gentle pity, my heart melted within me. 


The Sentimental Sex. 


182 

I could have taken her in my arms and cried like 
a child over my broken hopes in gratitude for her 
sympathy. 

“Where will you go, dear?” she whispered 
again. “It is much better that you should go. 
She will only break your heart. I have known it 
all along.” 

“You have known that she loved this man ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Why didn’t you tell me ? ” 

“ How could I when you thought you were 
so happy ? And I was afraid of her. That little 
turquoise heart she always wears was a present 
from him” 

“A cur like that! ” 

“ I knew you must find it out sooner or later. 
Dear, dear Mr. Vansittart, don’t stare in front of 
you in that stony way. I can’t bear to see you 
look so hopeless. When you are back in your 
old home in Australia you will forget her ” 

“My old home! ” 

She was echoing my thoughts. 

“You are not suited for this London life,” she 
was whispering. “You don’t understand it all. 

I have watched you, and I know. ‘ Iris ’ and all 
her friends laugh at everything, at love, and mar- 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 183 

riage, and faithfulness, and honour. They would 
only laugh the more if your heart was broken 
and you let them see it. Leave them all, and go 
back to your old home.” 

I could not speak. Words, looks, memories 
of all kinds were pressing in upon my brain; but 
clearer than all, the recollection of “ Iris’s ” face on 
that fellow’s shoulder 

“Where will you go?” Eileen’s voice was 
asking me for the third time. 

“To Australia as fast as a ship can take me.” 

“And how will you travel ? ” 

“Waterloo — Plymouth. Saturday’s boat.” 

She slid her hand into the roof of the cab and 
gave a direction to the driver. Until that moment 
I had seen nothing of the streets through which 
we were passing. Now, I found we were in the 
Strand. We did not speak again until the station 
was reached. 

“I can’t leave you when you are so miser- 
able,” Eileen murmured. “ Let me stay with you 
a little while. You won’t feel so lonely if you 
have me by you. And I can’t go back to her 
when she has treated you like this.” 

I stared at her for a moment, hardly under- 
standing her. My mind was so filled with my 


184 The Sentimental Sex. 

loss that it couldn’t take in other subjects. For it 
was not only my wife’s love which seemed to be 
gone for ever, but my belief in her, and in all 
women, and all my hopes of happiness in this 
world. I realised that Eileen was there beside me 
in the cab, a gentle, warm, comforting presence, 
but not much more. 

Now, when I turned to look at her and found 
her very pale, with tears still rolling down her 
face and her hands clasped, I understood that she 
was suffering too. Lately Eileen has taken to 
copying “ Iris’s” dress and the way in which she 
does her hair. It may sound inconsistent and ex- 
traordinary that just at this point in my life, when 
I was leaving “Iris,” perhaps for ever, my heart 
warmed to this girl (though with a sort of ache 
all the time) for looking like my wife. 

“You have been wonderfully good to me, 
dear,” I said, “but you must go home now. 
Good-bye.” 

“ Home! ” she repeated through her tears. “ I 
have no home. My home is where my heart is, 
where you are.” 

I said what I could to comfort her, though I 
was half beside myself still. The three o’clock 
train was already in the station, and I had no time 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 185 

to do more than take my ticket and hurry to- 
wards it. 

Eileen followed me to the door of the carriage. 
Just before the train began to move she raised 
herself on the foot-board and thrust her face in at 
the open window of the compartment. 

“ Kiss me, Niel ! 

Our lips met. Whether it was she or I who 
opened the door, I don’t know, but as the train 
began to move I found her beside me, with her 
arms round my neck and her tear-stained cheek 
against my shoulder. 


CHAPTER XX. 


mr. vansittart’s story — continued. 

I don’t want to talk about the journey down. 

It was a miserable time, and not less so on 
account of my anxiety about Eileen. 

The girl was in a false position. She had 
fallen into it through her single-minded devotion 
to me, and when I explained it to her, in her un- 
selfishness she could not be made to care. 

“Let me be your sister, your servant,” she 
urged. “ It is all I ask.” 

I should have been a brute if I hadn’t felt 
deeply touched by her love, and worse than a 
brute if I had taken advantage of her confiding 
innocence. 

Almost in silence we sat during the greater 
part of the journey, Eileen holding my hand be- 
tween both hers. Neither she nor I were very 
good at talking and both had much to think 
about. 


183 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 187 

Long before we reached Plymouth by the ex- 
press train in which we travelled, I knew I had 
done the wrong thing in leaving London as I did. 
I ought to have knocked that villain down and 
thrashed the life half out of him ; and afterwards I 
ought to have heard what “ Iris” had to say. 

It might not yet be too late. No one knew of 
our departure: no one but Eileen knew that I had 
returned home. The journey took about six hours 
— our express arrived at Plymouth before half-past 
eight — if we returned immediately we might at 
least reach Kensington in the small hours of the 
morning. I would not speak to my wife that 
night; I would sleep in the dressing-room, and 
have an interview with her in the morning. 

What she had done I could never forgive or 
forget. Life would never be the same, nor could 
I ever again feel for her the reverential worship she 
had once inspired in me. 

But the light in the drawing-room was ob- 
scured by thick lace curtains: might I not have 
been mistaken in that rapt look of passionate love 
I supposed I saw on her face ? Might not that in- 
solent scoundrel have forced himself into her pres- 
ence and caught her in his arms before she divined 

his intention ? 

13 


The Sentimental Sex. 


1 88 

Had there been anything pre-arranged in their 
meeting, they would never surely have left the 
door of the outer drawing-room open. 

I was coward enough to long for a loophole 
through which I could creep back to my wife and 
forgive her. This girl beside me reminded me 
of her so strongly: her hat had once belonged 
to “Iris,” and the thing she wore over her shoul- 
ders; her very hair seemed by this light fairer and 
more like “ Iris's,” and about her clothes hung the 
same sweet perfume “Iris” used. I clasped my 
arm closely round her as she nestled to my shoul- 
der, and shutting my eyes I tried to think it was 
my wife. By the stirring of the blood within my 
veins at the mere idea I knew that I loved “Iris” 
still, as much if not more than ever. 

I was passionately hurt, angry, and jealous, 
that was all. 

We were not half-an-hour from Plymouth and 
the light was failing. 

I roused Eileen, whose head was beginning to 
droop from sleepiness with a sudden question. 

“ How long had that man Warrington been in 
the house when I came home ? ” 

“Oh, a long time. Half-an-hour, I should 
think.” 


1 89 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 

“ Was she alone when he came in ?” 

“Yes. I was having lunch in the dining- 
room, and ‘ Iris * was playing the piano. She 
stopped when he came in. I heard him tell Jane 
not to announce him.” 

“Then she did not expect him.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I peeped through the 
door and recognised him at once, for I have often 
met him. I was dreadfully unhappy on your ac- 
count. The drawing-room door was open, and I 
just slipped in to ask him to go. But they were 
so busy talking they didn’t hear me.” 

“Did you — could you hear what they were 
saying ? ” 

“Yes. He was reminding her how she sat 
on his knee in the train once when they were 
coming back to town from Henley, and how he 
kissed her neck above her collar.” 

“Damn!” 

I apologised the next moment. But her words 
made me sicK with hate of the man, and with 
rage to think I had missed the opportunity of 
ramming them down his throat. I would do 
it yet: I was resolved upon it, and my fingers 
tingled with longing to strike the fellow down. 
But meantime I must possess my soul in patience 


The Sentimental Sex. 


190 

until Plymouth was reached, and I sat in angry 
silence until at about half-past eight the train 
steamed slowly into the station. 

Then I turned to Eileen. 

“ Eileen, dear,” I said, “I have made a great 
mistake. We must go back to London as soon as 
possible.” 

“To London!” she faltered. “Why, I 
thought ” 

“ Before I go to Australia I must see her. And 
I must see him too. For your sake alone, if not 
for my own, we must return at once.” 

She looked at me strangely. 

“It may be too late,” she murmured as the 
train came to a standstill. 

I asked her to wait for me in the waiting-room 
while I looked after the return trains and paid her 
fare, as she had taken no ticket, and I explained to 
the guard that the young lady was seeing me off 
and had been taken on by accident. I was glad 
she was not with me while I spoke to the man. 
She was dressed in some sort of light tan-coloured 
muslin, with a black cape covered with lace, and 
a big black hat. I was in a tall hat and a frock 
coat, and neither had any luggage. 

The man looked at me hard as he lis- 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 191 

tened to my explanations, and then observed 
drily — 

“You won’t get back to London to-night, sir. 
No more trains. First one out to-morrow morn- 
ing is the eight forty-one, due at Waterloo two 
thirty-three.” 

He was right. Had I been alone it would not 
have mattered. A little anxiety on my account 
would have been only a just punishment for a wife 
who had acted as mine had done. But Eileen ? 

What was I to do with her? How account 
for her ? And how explain her presence when I 
returned to London on the morrow to demand a 
full confession from “ Iris ” ? 

She had been actuated by the tenderest senti- 
ments of love, pity, and self-sacrifice when she 
insisted on accompanying me, but now her pres- 
ence was extremely embarrassing. 

Appearances were terribly against us. We 
looked like nothing in the world but a runaway 
couple, and should anyone get wind of this esca- 
pade, the poor child’s reputation would be irre- 
trievably ruined. 

With these thoughts in my mind, I went 
slowly towards the waiting-room. Eileen came 
hurriedly to meet me, looking flushed and excited. 


The Sentimental Sex. 


192 

“ There is no train back,” she began, “ I knew 
there wouldn’t be — that is, I guessed — I feared 
so.” 

“I am very, very sorry,” I said. ‘‘Mine is 
the whole blame. We must go to a hotel. You 
must pass as my sister, Miss Vansittart, and to- 
morrow we will go back to town.” 

She hung her head. 

“ I cannot face ‘ Iris,’ ” she murmured. 

“ Perhaps it would be better if I returned first, 
and you came by a later train. Then I could ex- 
plain things and prepare her. But I am forgetting 
you, poor child. You must be tired and hungry 
after your long journey in the heat.” 

“ I am, dreadfully,” she answered with a little 
laugh, “and oh, so dirty! I long to get to the 
hotel and wash the dust off.” 

In her innocence she clearly did not appreciate 
the gravity of the situation. Her tone was light- 
hearted, and she sprang readily into the cab in 
waiting to take us to the hotel. 

She must have been thinking things over in 
her own mind, though, for as we neared the 
hotel, she suggested that we should call ourselves 
“ Niel ” and not “ Vansittart.” 

“It will save questions afterwards,” she ex- 


193 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 

plained. “ I will speak to the landlady myself 
while you order dinner. I was too much excited 
and distressed to eat any lunch, and I am sure you 
had none. Dear Mr. Vansittart, you will be ill if 
you neglect yourself. Since we have to be to- 
gether, you must let me look after you.” 

At the hotel she left me to “ put herself in the 
landlady’s care,” as she said, and I went outside 
for a smoke while dinner was being prepared. 

It was a lovely, tranquil evening, and as I gazed 
out over the wide-spreading harbour, my heart 
leaped within me at the sight of the ships lying at 
anchor there. 

“ ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world ! ” 

The line from some poem of Tennyson’s got 
in my head, and stuck there as I watched the red 
gleam of reflected splendour where the sun had 
set beyond the horizon. 

It was London life which had spoiled our 
union; away in my old home in the New World 
things would all come right again. 

I am ashamed to say it, but the sea air and my 
long fast had made me extremely hungry. Dinner 
was served to us in a private room, and the wait- 
ers eyed us curiously. I remember it was a very 


194 


The Sentimental Sex. 


good dinner, and also that Eileen had contrived in 
some wonderful woman’s way to tidy and freshen 
her appearance so that she never looked prettier, 
and never more like my wife. Her hair was 
parted in the middle and waved away round her 
head (a woman never looks so pure and sweet as 
when she wears her hair like that), and she had a 
cluster of deep red roses in her gown near her 
neck. 

She looked radiantly happy. It cut me to the 
heart to think how little cause she would have for 
happiness if this mad journey of ours ever got 
really known, but I could not sadden or humiliate 
her by giving voice to my reflections. 

After dinner, Eileen begged me to take her to 
“ look at the sea.” I took her to the Hoe, and we 
sat on a seat together under the stars, her hand in 
mine: I was so grateful to her, so sorry for her — 
and she was so like “ Iris! ” 

“ I love the sea,” she whispered at last. “ And 
to-morrow we shall be upon it, shall we not?” 

I started and turned to look at her. 

“To-morrow,” I said, “we shall be going 
back to London.” 

“Surely it is too late to think of that,” she 
said, with a little half-hysterical laugh, her whole 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 195 

frame shivering with excitement. “ I have known 
‘ Iris ’ a long time, and she never forgives.” 

“She has nothing to forgive,” I said sternly. 
“ It is she who needs to be forgiven.” 

“Oh, but she won’t think so! And if she 
could see us now at this moment, do you think 
she would forgive that? ” 

I moved away from her sharply, but her hands 
were fastened round my arm to detain me. She 
began to talk in quick, tearful tones. 

“Dear Mr. Vansittart, you don’t know how 
jealous ‘ Iris * is, and how hard. She never be- 
lieves in anyone’s goodness, or truth, or purity. 
She knows I love you, and am sorry for you, and 
when she finds out that we have come down here 
together ” 

“She need never find it out.” 

“She knows it already.” 

The words came out in a sort of gasp, as 
though they had to be said, and she feared the 
consequences. 

I disengaged her hands from my arm pretty 
sharply, and got up and stood in front of the 
seat. 

“ What do you mean by that ?” I asked. 

The girl began to sob and cry, so that I had to 


196 The Sentimental Sex. 

wait for my answer. It came at length with 
many entreaties to me “not to be angry." 

At Plymouth station, while I talked with the 
guard, Eileen had herself despatched a telegram to 
my wife, telling her of our flight together. 

I could scarcely believe my ears. 

“How dared you do it? What made you? 
What did you say ? ” 

“I — didn’t want you to go back to her, and 
‘be miserable,’ she sobbed, “and I knew you 
couldn’t if I told her. So I said we loved each 
other, and were going to Australia, and I asked 
her to forgive us.’’ 

‘ ‘ You said that to my wife ! ” 

“Yes. Oh, don’t look at me like that! If 
you are angry with me, it will kill me! Can’t 
you, won’t you understand that she doesn’t care 
for you, that she never did, that she only married 
you for your money, and that now she wants to 
get rid of you ? ’’ 

“ It’s a lie! ” 

“ It’s the truth! ’’ 

She sprang up and caught at my hands, hold- 
ing them tightly in her small hot fingers. 

“Niel, Niel, I love you!’’ she wailed. “Why 
will you be so hard to me ? Why will you keep 


X 91 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 

on thinking of that cruel woman who hates us 
both ? What has she ever done for you, what 
has she ever given up for you, and / am ready to 
give up everything! If all the world scorns me, 
and turns against me, I don’t care one bit, so long 
as you are kind to me. When I came with you, I 
knew what I was doing. I was giving myself to 
you. Niel, dear Niel, you can’t have the heart to 
cast me off when I love you so! ” 

Her words failed to move me. I felt too 
deeply angry even to look at her. I walked away 
and up and down the esplanade for a few mo- 
ments to steady myself before I could speak to 
her again. 

When I came back I found her crouched in a 
corner of the seat, crying bitterly. In the moon- 
light her face looked distorted and ugly as she 
stared up at me through her tears. 

“Listen,” I said, “I don’t want to be unkind, 
but I cannot forgive you. What you have done 
seems to be planned. Now I think of it, it was 
you who first made me jealous of that fellow 
Warrington, with your hints and suggestions. 
There was never any trouble between my wife 
and me before you came into the house. The 
quarrel this morning was all about you — perhaps 


198 The Sentimental Sex. 

even, you arranged that man’s visit. I thought 
your coming with me was an accident, and 
brought about by your pity and innocence; but 
now that you have begun to try and set me 
against my wife, and have sent her that message, 
I feel as if I don’t ever want to see your face 
again! ” 

“Ah, don’t say that!” she cried, with a little 
scream of pain, springing up from her seat and 
clutching at me despairingly with her arms. 
“You can't be so cruel! Think what I have 
done for you. What will everyone say of me ? 
What will ‘ Iris ’ make them say ? My good name 
is in her hands, and she hates me.” 

“You should have thought of that before you 
sent the telegram,/’ I answered harshly. It may 
seem unjust, but I felt as if I absolutely hated the 
girl, and the clinging touch of her fingers filled 
me with impatience. “You had better go back 
to the hotel,” I continued. “ Here is some money 
to settle the bill and for your return fare.” 

She took the note I offered mechanically. 

“And you?” she said, fixing startled eyes 
upon me. 

“I will find some other hotel in the town.” 

“ But what will the people in this hotel think ? ” 


Mr. Vansittart’s Story. 199 

she faltered. “I — they think we are husband and 
wife ! ” 

“ I gave our names as Mr. and Miss Niel.” 

“The landlady can’t have understood. She 
asked me, and I — I told her you were my hus- 
band.” 

I shook her off from me roughly. For the first 
time I understood how it is a strong man can 
strike a fragile woman. 

“You can go back to the hotel,” I said be- 
tween my teeth, “and as you are good at lying 
you can invent what lie you like to explain things. 
As far as I am concerned, I have done with you, 
and I don’t want ever to see you again.” 

She gave a little cry, and fell on the seat in a 
heap. I saw her lying huddled there, a black 
figure in the moonlight, as I walked away. 

Perhaps I ought to have gone back. But pity- 
ing words are dangerous with a woman of that 
sort; and, anyhow, she had come between me 
and “Iris,” and I couldn’t speak them. 


CHAPTER XXL AND LAST. 

MR. VANSITTART’S LAST WORDS. 

Less than an hour ago I stopped the cab in 
which I had driven from Waterloo at the corner of 
my own street. 

I wanted to walk up and slip in quietly. 

It was ten minutes past three by the clocks in 
the High Street. For twenty-four hours I had 
seen and heard nothing of my wife or she of me. 

I had good reason to be angry with her, yet 1 
longed with all my soul to hold her in my arms 
again. 

I could not bear to think of what she must 
have suffered when she received that girl’s lying 
telegram, and imagined that I was false to her. 
She certainly deserved some punishment for her 
indiscreet and improper conduct in receiving that 
blackguard, Warrington, in my absence, but not 
so cruel a blow as that. 


200 


Mr. Vansittart’s Last Words. 201 


She is so delicate, so sensitive, that I dreaded 
the effect of such a shock upon her. 

It seemed almost a surprise to find the house 
looking just as usual, the pretty lace curtains in 
the windows, the lace-trimmed blinds half-way 
down to keep the sun out of the dining-room, and 
the flowers in the window-boxes drooping a little 
in the heat. 

No one saw me come in. I softly opened the 
drawing-room door: I didn’t want those prying 
servants to catch sight of me before I met my 
wife. 

There was a sound of talking from the inner 
room. I drew back and the blood rushed to my 
face. Was it possible that in my absence that 
hound Warrington 

No! It was a woman’s voice and it belonged 
to Mrs. Francis. 

I hate that woman, and I have told my wife 
not to encourage her visits. “Iris” is for some 
reason fond of her. With her bitter tongue and 
heartless cynicism Mrs. Francis is a very bad com- 
panion for any man’s wife. 

“I think you are too hard upon the Noble 
Savage,” she was saying. “It was that hussy 
Eileen who ran away with him , I am convinced. 


202 The Sentimental Sex. 

Why in the world did you have the girl about the 
place ?” 

I realised that the vulgar nickname was applied 
to me. I did not want to listen to their conversa- 
tion, but at the moment my desperate anxiety to 
hear my wife speak held me motionless and 
dumb. 

“Pray don’t blame Eileen,” came at last in 
that low soft voice I loved so dearly. “ She acted 
according to her lights, and I really owe her a 
debt of gratitude for putting a stop to an unendur- 
able state of things. But you will be amused to 
hear that I allowed her to stay with us because I 
trusted Niel.” 

“Dear ‘Iris,’ you are very young still! I 
shouldn’t divorce him, though : one never knows 
the value of a husband until one has divorced him. 
Husbands are useful in so may ways. They un- 
derstand time-tables, and can interview tax-collect- 
ors, and save one’s frock from the wheels getting 
in and out hansoms. I’ve often wished I had Ted 
back in spite of his immorality. Besides, how 
can you divorce him ? He’ll soon get tired of 
Eileen and come pounding back to you in a tor- 
nado of repentance. And I don’t think even you 
with all your cleverness will get him to beat you.” 


Mr. Vansittart’s Last Words. 203 

“ So long as I get rid of him I don’t care how 
it’s done. Oh, I must tell you, Frank: after I had 
seen Drogo Warrington yesterday and realised that 
he had a. sort of animal-magnetism power over 
me, I made up my mind to be a perfect angel to 
Niel, and as like the daguerrotype mother with 
the side-curls and the mushroom hat as possible. 
I never wanted to marry Niel, and I’ve scarcely 
had a peaceful or comfortable hour since we left 
the church together. It’s been a mistake, but I 
was resolved not to let the mistake develop into a 
tragedy. Just twenty-four hours ago I decided 
that I would give up London and all that I care 
for in life and devote myself to duty and dulness 
in the country with Niel. We would buy a coun- 
try house, and if possible a farm, and we would 
potter round the barns, prodding pigs and culti- 
vating bucolic peace. Don’t laugh — I really meant 
it. And in the middle of all these excellent reso- 
lutions, my servants came to tell me that my hus- 
band and Miss Carter had ‘ gone off in a hansom 
down the street together ! ’ 

“ Later on I got a maudlin’ telegram, sent from 
Plymouth Station at a quarter to nine. 4 We love 
each other. We are going to Australia. Try to 
forgive us. Eileen and Niel.’ I read it and shook 
14 


204 


The Sentimental Sex. 


with laughter. I couldn’t help it. It seemed such 
utter bathos on the top of my qualms of con- 
science over a kiss from Drogo ! 

“Afterwards, I felt hurt and wounded in my 
pride, and almost inclined to cry with vexation. 
You see, I had actually trusted Niel, and yet a 
cheap thing like Eileen Carter could make him 
false to me in one month. After the self-repress- 
ing life I have endured, the sermonising I have put 
up with, the perpetual boredom of Niel’s society 
which I have cheerfully suffered ! It would make 
me look supremely ridiculous in the eyes of the 
world, too. Not that I care, mind, for the world; 
but still, for a man to go off like that within six 
months of marriage, and with Eileen Carter! 

“The sting came early in the day. Before I 
went to bed I realised that it was quite the best 
thing that could have happened. Niel has no 
brains and is all emotion: Eileen has no brains 
and is all emotion. He is full of illusions and 
ideals: she full of artfulness and humbug. An 
admirably-matched pair! She may very likely be 
unfaithful to him, but at least she will never say 
anything to shock him. I went to bed in peace, 
with philanthropic regrets that I should ever have 
come between them.” 


Mr. Vansittart’s Last Words. 205 

“ That sounds very effective, my dear, but you 
had very much better forgive him. To be a ‘ Mrs.’ 
without either a husband or a family grave is an 
anomalous position.” 

“Forgive him, if you like. But I never mean 
to see him again if I can help it. Yesterday re- 
vived in me two sensations I had almost forgotten. 
I suddenly loved Drogo when I felt his arms round 
me, and I suddenly hated Niel when I knew he 
had disgraced me by going off openly with an- 
other woman. I have never loved him, never for 
one moment. I have tried hard to like him, and I 
believed I was getting used to him. But at the 
mere suggestion of taking him back and living 
with him as his wife again, I feel I hate him, and 
my skin tingles all over with disgust. Why 
should this man force himself into my life and 
frighten and worry me into marrying him and into 
enduring his exaggerated fits of love and jealousy 
and sullen ill-temper, and impose upon me his 
stupid, narrow ideas, his ignorant prejudices, and 
his bigoted creeds ? Why should I day and night 
alienate myself from my friends, alter my habits, 
and crush down my individuality in order to make 
myself acceptable to him ? Just because he is the 
man, and I am the woman, and he is big and 


20 6 


The Sentimental Sex. 


strong enough to murder me with ease. I never 
realised what a satisfactory husband Mr. Lambert 
was until I married Niel. But now, after two at- 
tempts, I have done with matrimony. Men have 
too much sentiment and two little humour to suit 
me in the capacity of husbands. So let us dismiss 
the subject. Shall we have coffee and cigarettes ? 
I have been smoking cigarettes ever since Mr. 
Vansittart ran away, to celebrate my freedom.” 

“I should love a cigarette myself. But you 
must tell me one thing. What will Drogo War- 
rington do if his wife divorces him ? ” 

“Marry Maud Western, I suppose. Poor old 
darling! He is much too good for her.” 

“I have heard every word you said about me 
to that woman. I have never been false to you. 

I knew nothing of that telegram. But as you 
hate me, that won’t matter to you. I have been 
a fool, I see. I won’t trouble you any longer. 
You can go back to the life you like and forget all 
about me. My heart is broken, and there’s only 
one way out of it. Don’t be too hard on that 
poor girl. I have no love for her— I never have 
loved any woman but you — she’s a silly, kind 
little thing, and a woman may save her still. 1 


Mr. Vansittart’s Last Words. 207 

don’t suppose you set much store by your wed- 
ding ring: will you put it in my hand when you 
find me here dead, and have it buried with me ? 
It’s my mother’s ring she gave me when she was 
dying, the ring I married you with. I’ve got the 
pistol here in front of me ready, and I never miss 
anything I aim at. O Iris, if it could all have 
been real and you could have loved me! It has 
been my fault, my mistake right through. Good- 
bye, my wife, my darling. Try not to hate me 
when I’m dead, for I loved you so dearly. 


“Niel Vansittart.” 


















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ton Courier. 


A/TAJESTY. A Novel. By Louis Couperus. Trans- 
. lated by A. Teixeira de Mattos and Ernest Dowson. 
i 2 mo. Cloth, $1.00. 


" There have been many workers among novelists in the field of royal portraiture, 
but it may be safely stated that few of those who have essayed this dubious path have 
achieved more striking results than M. Couperus. ‘Majesty' is an extraordinarily 
vivid romance of autocratic imperialism.” — London Academy. 

"No novelist whom we can call to mind has ever given the world such a master- 
piece of royal portraiture as Louis Couperus’s striking romance entitled ‘ Majesty.’ ” — 
Philadelphia Record. 

" There is not an uninteresting page in the book, and it ought to be read by all 
who desire to keep in line with the best that is published in modern fiction.” — Buffalo 
Commercial. 



HE A r EW MOON. By C. E. Raimond, author 

of “ George Mandeville’s Husband,” etc. i2mo. Cloth, $1.00. 


"A delicate pathos makes itself felt as the narrative progresses, whose cadences 
fall on the spirit’s consciousness with a sweet and soothing influence not to be meas- 
ured in words.” — Boston Courier. 

" One of the most impressive of recent works of fiction, both for its matter and 
especially for its presentation.” — Milwatikee Journal. 

"An intensely interesting story. A curious interweaving of old superstitions which 
govern a nervous woman’s selfish life, and the brisk, modern ways of a wholesome 
English girl.” — Philadelphia Ledger. 


T 


HE WISH. A Novel. By Hermann Sudermann. 

With a Biographical Introduction by Elizabeth Lee. i 2 mo. 
Cloth, $1.00. 


"Contains some superb specimens of original thought.” — New York' World. 

" The style is direct and incisive, and holds the unflagging attention of the reader.” 
— Boston Journal. 

"A powerful story, very simple, very direct.” — Chicago Evening Post. 


New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. 










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